


It's not a black hole.

by ErotiqueGrounded



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Character Interpretation, Ashen Romance | Auspistice, Ashen-Red Vacillation, Established Relationship, F/M, Feelings Jams, Fluff and Angst, Foreshadowing, Grimbark, Kink Negotiation, Mental Health Issues, Mind Meld, Not Beta Read, Plot With Porn, Post-Sburb/Sgrub, Prostitution Roleplay, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, Sensory Deprivation, Undue Seriousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-25
Updated: 2015-08-27
Packaged: 2018-04-17 06:45:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 34,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4656702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ErotiqueGrounded/pseuds/ErotiqueGrounded
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The beaten whore sits awkwardly against the tile wall of the prison shower block, weeping through her closed eyes, trying to control her haggard breathing as the cold water runs over her aching body.</p><p>[hehehehehehe oh god what the fuck is she doing]</p><p>The beaten whore sits awkwardly against the tile wall of the prison shower block, weeping through her closed eyes, trying to control her haggard breathing as the cold water runs over her aching body, but is unable to stop herself from giggling insanely.</p><p>[yes much better]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. "The Burning Streets"

**Author's Note:**

> Chapters three and five are alternate endings which feature violence and blood/gore (mild in three, intense in five) that won't be otherwise present (why they're 'alternate'). This may be the start of a (hopefully much less serious) series, and if so those two chapters will likely prove to be 'spoilers' for the rest of the 'canon' works, in time.
> 
> Only the first two chapters are porny at all, sorry. After that it's all feelings jam and/or ultraviolence and/or weird plot shit.
> 
> Apologies to those suffering from the featured condition (which is untagged and unnamed until chapters 4 and 5, but which i hope makes sense in hindsight and that i'm not alone in seeing as a possible real element of the character), or treating those with it, for any missteps made in its description, and especially for the entire confrontation and 'treatment' which I know is not very accurate.
> 
> By reading this work you agree to COMMENT ON IT. PLEASE. If you don't finish, tell me why. If you do, tell me your thoughts. Pretty please.

She wears a tiny lime-green dress over a full-body black fishnet one-piece. Her arms are covered in bracelets and all four of her ears bristle with broad hoops, all cheap bright plastic. [And altogether they make a rainbow of her. They turn her wide raven curls and dark makeup from void to background, and they turn her tanned rough skin to cream.] She wears cherry-red sandals with heels [goddamnit fuck how bullshit fuck this] shorter than she'd prefer but still taller than she actually likes. She leaves her tail unadorned [it has a mind of its own, and a strong opinion on the issue].

Part of her is always tuned to spirographs, always IS spirograph, beautiful complexities of radial symmetry, the artful occupation and manipulation of space. A lot of her is also Space, and so she feels this control from both sides. [Wow, not as erotic as that sounds. Like pushing her hands together. Although...] The crudeness of the harlequin fractal pressing into her thighs, her buttox, the tender ticklish flesh just under her shoulder blades, it comes back and hits her over and over again. Like being halfway through a really good novel before realizing it's written painfully below her reading level. It feels like anxiousness and confinement and noxious, guilty contentedness. [The first time she'd seen herself in it she'd become so aroused she'd totally lost control, had brought herself off whimpering in the bathroom with Dave waiting patiently, obliviously, on the other side of the door. She'd felt ashamed and embarrassed for herself. Then she looked in the mirror again, at some disgusting pathetic thing she didn't recognize, and her resurging arousal obliterated everything but horror. She'd taken it back off and put it back away without telling him, playing off her big surprise as being merely the unannounced appearance, that evening, of their well-worn strap-on - that way she didn't have to be penetrated so soon, either.]

The dress is practically mundane, by comparison. Just another alchemization disaster that could have easily once been the butt of an ironically prescient joke about exactly its ultimate (current) fate. It's frilly and bright and comes off quickly. [He has to realize it's alchemical heritage from The Dress of Eclectica. She hopes he doesn't dwell on it, doesn't start thinking about that briefly lived but significant outfit which, in hindsight, wouldn't have been greatly out of place itself, here today. The first new clothes she'd made herself when given the nigh-unlimited freedom of the alchemiter. The way her stomach had clenched feeling the coarse transparent gauze of her new skirt, which was decent to wear only by virtue of its multiple layers (and the included undershirt and heavy hose). The tight top hugging her chest, low under her arms and less than an inch over her nipples. The way the tight black undershirt liner had felt against her small breasts, had bunched up awkwardly in her elbows and armpits. How she had been panting and flushed through all their time on LOFAF for more than just the cold. That she was so completely fucked even so early, so young.] It only mostly covers her genitals - no [training wheels] undershirt or hose, this time.

She walks the streets, south-side of Derse and west of Prospit, the southwestern corner of the City. The Jungle. If The City hums, the Jungle ticks, or chirps, pedestrians slipping through like droplets of dew off a leaf, vehicles like sudden errant gusts on a still day. She knows the faces [the face], if not the names [Does he go that far? She smirks imagining them and is torn between hopes.]. In turn she will sometimes be acknowledged... but she is always seen. [The sun heats her head and back, but it can't muster to be called 'burning', next to their gaze. She walks the streets in lingerie and burns under the gaze of strangers, and any one of them could have her, for nothing more than their word and the right paper bill. She walks the streets and melts.]

She sees the young blond mailman on his rounds, humorously out of place, darting between his van and the boxes of the apartment buildings. It's not a place to loiter - at least not as an amateur. She's passed by by a group of young men identifiable as immigrant day laborers more by their clothing and demeanor than their ethnic features, which are quite a ways outside what she understands to be [have been] the norm for their particular caste. [She appreciates these moments of Earth culture, even the ones she lacks any personal context for and has to have explained to her later, for exactly the 'wrong reasons' - rather than immersing her they gently remind her of the true larger circumstances. Or really it's especially the ones she needs explained, his eagerness in explaining them, and his continuing on with them where he has to know they're lost on her. It helps to assuage any paranoid guilt she may feel about his (incomprehensible) outpouring of effort here. This isn't all just for her. She may not understand exactly what it is, for him, but it's not just his damned chivalry. The Earth-specificity of them also helps cut any spikes of paranoia about the possible involvement of a certain alien seamstress right back down. They've both agreed to avail themselves of the uniquely suited wisdom of his brother, but even that necessity has been nearly too far for her. The thought of anyone else aware of this, of actually seeing her like this, makes her want to just curl up. To go right down on her ass and be as small as possible. To stop.]

She almost breaks scene when she sees the children. Thankfully her spirograph-self quickly unfolds, leeching her knowledge of the Time mechanics behind the trick. She still pauses to watch him [them babies babies], and to seriously consider doing it anyway, just to give him a piece of her mind. Breaking something like that on her, like this. Their golden heads bob as they wander past her and away, to [vanish babies gone nooooooo] who knows where. She watches them all the way, nails of her right hand digging into the ring finger of her left. There WILL be a discussion about this, after. [They're all infertile, of course. One last little rub from the game, a permanent reminder of what they really aren't. They could, at any time, start the revival of their race, with a single deliberate conscious action, the literal press of a button. Of course they haven't, yet. Instead they fuck like rabbits, too stupid to realize the reaper they're running from never entered the race to start with, and that there is no finish line anywhere ahead. Some day, of course, they'll decide they're stable and mature enough. They'll have to, with no biology stepping up to make the decision for them. Some day.]

[She lingers too long, watching every step they take, feeling too much (way more than she's supposed to, for this scenario).] She's distracted, and this must have been the point, because as she turns back around she's running directly into a warm body. [Her partners one-man waltz is choreographed to the (micro, pico?) second, and there are no accidents, no matter how extreme a diversion any linear actor may attempt. Physical contact is her cue.]

"Where the fuck you goin, bitch?!"  
[Shit. She wasn't expecting this today. She'd been looking forward to a nice guilty, little bit dirty, romp with some tired and sweaty working-class stiff in a hurry to get rid of his paycheck in exchange for that thing his actual girl won't do. She'd thought maybe that mailman, with his too-well-made uniform. Instead...] She looks up into His red eyes. The garish piece of shit he's ensconced in is the one outfit in creation that could almost dull them, but right now the anger in them more than compensates.  
"Oh, Davey, I was just -"  
He grabs her by her arm, just under her elbow, and starts pulling her along. His hand is a claw, and it hurts.  
"It don't even matter. Actually glad I found you so quickly. Got a legitimate *client* lined up for you, princess."  
"What-"  
He tightens his grip and hisses at her, turns back to stare at her with narrowed eyes. Her arm is aching, now, and if she's bruised what will that mean for her 'client'? But she bites her tongue. She knows better than to be asking questions, and is thankful for his gentle reminder.  
He's pulling her back down the block, to the townhouse she calls home and he calls his business. When they cross the line between the block of apartment buildings and the start of the old ['old'] townhomes she looks around futily for the children [gone babies gone vanished back into time into him], in spite of herself. He notices and gives her a tug, but doesn't comment. [She can feel the twinge of regret there, behind the annoyance. Possibly tempering it, which she may have to chastise him for later. She feels the burn in her ring finger. Oh yes, there will be many things to discuss that night.]  
"So how much you made me so far today?"  
[She doesn't really know how to play this one. Truly, she's clean. Or, a bit grimy with sweat and city air on all her bare skin, but there's nothing *in* her. She showered forty minutes ago, after changing out of her welding gear. The Witch is clean, but Jadiah ain't never been, never will be.]  
She plays it safe; lets him guide her. "Well..." she draws out the syllable with a genuine smile. She feels it immediately; of course the right move was letting him make it for her.  
"Ha, figured as much." He grimaces, something inscrutable in his eyes... pity? [Once again she doesn't know how to take that.] "So, give me what you do got and get your ass-" He punctuates with a slap to the appropriate anatomy. "up into the shower. I'll be along in a minute with a surprise for you."  
She titters and hands him her purse with [three colored compubands on each arm, one sandaltop on each foot, one stealthcompuband flush on each leg, one EFSCD; well within acceptable margins to abandon primary device compuclutch] out a second thought, and transitions gracefully from his toss forward to climbing the stairs, up to the living area.

If crossing the front door threshhold wasn't worth mentioning, the contrast between the model home ground floor and the flophouse upper rooms more than makes up for it. Nearly the entire floor is open space, filled with a score of loft beds and the micro-bedrooms packed in beneath them. The variety and personalization on display, the clear sense of ownership, forestalls any military barracks or prison ward comparison, but it's eerie nonetheless. [The abundant subconscious evidence of artifice is surely no help. The detail is astounding, but... off. Everything is covered in unique personal effects of imaginary inhabitants, which altogether carefully tell you absolutely nothing about them but what you already know (female, destitute, glamorous). Makeup stains some pillows, but it's all the same few shades. The furniture is all organically weathered, but the wear doesn't match, as two pieces sat next to each other should. Or, in a few cases, the wear matches perfectly- exactly as the alchemiter spit it out, for both molecularly identical pieces. And it smells... the exact same as the ground floor - show home. No hairspray, no food, no accumulation of body odors from a dozen or more tired working girls. No drugs, come to that. Dirk has a thing about drugs, even as props.]

She hurries through the awkward space and to the bathroom - another open space, a single huge shower with one wall fully mirrored and some free-standing toilets against the opposite. [Now this is like a prison, or worse. WTF was Dirk thinking exactly?] She steels herself as she walks in, but still starts when she lays eyes on herself in that full mirror [only now, clothed in sweat and city-grime, is the costume complete]. Her held breath comes back out a whine. Her netting itches as it presses [and, uugh, *tessellates her flesh*] and her skirt scratches as its layers [oh god *her translucent manifolds*] whisper-slide over each other and she stares at this street-walking five-dollar whore in the mirror and [she's so fucked] is reminded again just how bad she has it. She remembers their eyes, on her.

She has the dress off, the shower on, and is in the cold stream just as her trembling hands take their initiative towards her crotch. She restrains herself and lets the water wash over her, only moving to turn the dial back as it starts to warm. She stands and shakes [her hands over her junk like Roses over a crystal ball in ironic concentration, and it's a funny thought and humor helps] and doesn't know if the tension is leaving her or swallowing her. But eventually she's shaking less, and is actually quite cold.  
"fuuuck"  
It's an exultation; she hasn't failed. [She dimly recognizes a conflict of purpose here; failed at what, again? But now's not the time for examination, now is the time for action. Including exhaustive inaction? Sure?]

As she relaxes, de-tenses at last, her movement revitalizes the slide and press of [a grid] the netting and now it just upsets her, that unwanted [yeesss] stimulation. She peels it off and lets it slop down to the floor just as Davey arrives [perfect timing, of course]. He's abandoned his furs, stripped off all his tops but a form-fitting tank-top, and he makes an impressive figure as he slides silently into the doorway [did he know she was facing it?]. Her eyes dart immediately to his still-shod feet. [Would it be too much to fall there herself? ... Jesus, Harley.]  
"... heh." He breathes deep through his nose, testing the air. He examines her nude form without reservation, his gaze passing over the bands and earrings she still bears before falling to her flushed pussy, considering. "yeah, you're the right one for this."  
She keeps her gaze stuck firmly on the genuine crimson alligator [is it genuine if it's alchemized genuine?] loafers [should be cowboy boots]. She's trying to do the impossible [completing the spell she cast with her crystal-ball cunt oh god hahaha] and simultaneously bite her lip while keeping them pressed together in a straight line. She sees herself in the mirror, and realizes she's found the secret recipe for the perfect pout. [Magic continues to be fake.]  
"Look at you, ridiculous thing, playing with yourself in the shower. You're truly insatiable, aren't you? The genuine article nymphomaniac."  
"hnnmmm" It's not an answer and he knows it.  
"Look at me, Jadiah."

She raises her head slowly, following the crimson pinstripes up their maroon field [goofy as hell, that forced scale pattern, they're not even straight], past his crotch [smooth and straight, poker faced, heh] to where they all converge at the waistband, beneath a genuine black croc [oh god this isn't all consort, is it? even via alchemization, no, just no.] belt. [A ring of heat settles on her middle finger.] She watches the ripple of his abdominal muscles beneath his tank-top for any signs of movement, but he's doing his best statue impression [and it's appreciated]. His hands are rested on his hips, his elbows out, the most perfectly minor hint of a lean forward - the perfect expression of amused exasperation to match his tone. [Practiced, or picked up from, a troll? It's a very, troll, thing.] The pose does nothing to accentuate the muscles of his arms, but it doesn't really need to, either.

Just as her leer reaches his pecs and neck they suddenly explode in her view. She's knocked backward, and would probably be going down to her ass if he weren't grabbing her by the arm and spinning her, bending her over, slipping her bracelets off in the same single continuous explosion he also turns the water off and gets a sturdy fistfull of her hair. At some point she's opened her mouth to scream [DID THIS DEAD MOTHERFUCKER JUST FLASH-STEP ON ME IN THE FUCKING SHOWER] but all that comes out is a warbling gasp. The bands complete their short journey to the wet tile, pinging and ponging and warbling themselves as they spin down to a rest and he's already two fingers inside her from behind, pressing down in a targeted g-spot strike. She stammers out something like a refusal [that they're both present enough to ignore; hard to work such an absolutely canine snarl into this scene] and he whispers in not-response;  
"Daddy's right here, girl."  
To that she does try to snarl, to bark, she would be turned around and snapping at him if she weren't locked forward. Instead what falls from her lips is  
"please,"  
almost a cough.

He stops rubbing little circles and starts pistoning, so hard, [IT HURTS] punching her lips with every thrust, knocking her face into the wall [her nose is pressed in and her mouth is a loose gape and she tastes her own snot chilled by the tile and she is literally ahegao right now and she doesn't care] and [IT HURTS] it's so good, too good, too much, she's going to come and she's letting him know with her crooning and then he's gone. In his place there's suddenly ice-cold water sluicing down her back, running straight down over and into her pussy. She barely catches herself on the wall, where she stays, bent into the same universal position of sexual surrender he'd left her in, just quivering. It takes her several moments of catching her breath to realize she still hasn't come, the shock wasn't quite enough, the cold water coruscating through her folds is simply draining the edge of her arousal now, not dragging her past the point of no return.

This time her body and her are finally in total accord as she spins with a ROAR, and if the room is greener for a moment he does a good job of withholding reaction long enough to reach out and backhand her. It's been rough from the start, but this [physical contact] overt violence is something different [finally getting started].

She's back against the wall, this time upright and facing him but still in no more control of herself than before, as he wraps his hand around her neck like a steel collar. [IDEA! Her pinky flares.] His other hand is [in] wrapped around her breast, tight so [it huuurts] it forms to his grip. He is in her face and [she wishes he could close that last impossible gap and just take it from her, hang his own over hers and set her free] she can only stare back [no breath now].

His eyes are the color of blood  
"... better now?"  
but they are cold.  
She's [obscenely overstimulated] weeping slightly, but actually feeling pretty icy herself [except three fingers on her left hand, and a few critical square inches between her legs] despite it. He must sense her next move almost simultaneous with her own forming of intent, because before she can even gather a good mouthful of saliva he's taking her feet out from under her and pressing her down to her knees. [She remembers the unseen third party,] He wrenches her mouth open one-handed [the puppetmaster.] and takes hold of her tongue by the tip, pulling it out to its full [inhuman] length. [She was wrong. NOW she is literally ahegao, and she cares very very much.]

They hold that way for a moment, eyes locked. Her hands have been clenched around his wrists for a while now and they're starting to cramp, but she doesn't know what else to do with them [she adds a note to her pinky - arm restraints]. The falling water drums chaotically on the back of her head and small of her back. She has no idea what's supposed to happen next. It seems she isn't alone in her momentary blank, as Dave[y] seems to be idly exploring the unfamiliarly canine features of her tongue [he's never actually had it in front of him this way, has he?]. Running his middle finger over the wide thin ripples which extend out from its sides, careful to keep the tip pinched firmly in his control.

It tickles, and her [giggle] whine wakes them both back up, kicks the scene back into motion.  
"Bitch found her place again? Ready to play nice and come make daddy proud?"  
She groans. [It's the most she can do, but it's all she'd want to do anyway, in response to that cheese.] He seems to take it as an affirmation, leaning in close again. He's as [not] close [enough] as he's ever been. [She yearns for that impossibility of superposition, entanglement. She could swear she can feel the literal gravity between them, and may not be wrong. She would swear it's elevated, special, just for them right then. Their faces want to become one thing. She could swear. She could make it happen...] Their lashes bat at each other, and they taste each others shallow breath.  
"Decided you wanted to get your slobber on, huh? Dirty my suit with your drool?"  
She makes more noise. [Animal.] She watches his eyes more closely than she's watched anything in her life [thank god for god-tier vision], but they're too larger-than-life to try actually reading. [Part of her knows this is heading to a vigorous skullfucking, naughty puppy punishment time. And yes, with that thought she is in fact now drooling.]

He pulls back, just enough to lean down, and his own tongue pops out of his mouth. This time her giggle probably can't be confused - it is an inherently absurd image, Dave Strider sticking his tongue out. It's so silly she can't parse it, doesn't realize where it's headed until he's bending back down and licking her.

A single narrow stripe down  
[FU  ]  
nearly the full length of her tongue  
[  CK]  
starting from his thumbnail  
[       ]  
ending as a sloppy half-sealed tonsil-tickling soul kiss.  
[F U C K]

He releases her tongue [prickly numb now] and she's in him, and [this is it he's taking her no more Jade just Dave pouring subsuming Dave Strider Singularity now yes] she's completely forgotten their hands as she rapes his mouth with her gross giant dog tongue and that's probably a good thing because it takes her several intense seconds to realize he's still got her by the throat, and now by both hands, together, as well, and he's holding her off. This does not make her happy. This is not what she wants and everything but what she wants is over now, end scene, time for the curtain drop which is to say [FUCK ME INTO YOU NOW DAVE, JADE GOES AWAY NOW DAVE YOU FUCK GIVE TAKING ME GIVE] simple uncomplicated fucking.

He draws back.  
"No." It's her first real word since she's stripped and it is appropriately nude itself. "No, no."  
[She's wracking her mind for the "danger word". She'll never not know "Becquerel" is safe but that's the wrong one she needs the other one the one that's kind of silly because nobody ever worries about things being not enough that's dumb that's not a real problem stupid silly Dirk and his pervert science ritual bullshit FUCK.]  
She realizes she never stopped saying it, has been saying it over and over, drawn out into a oscillating whine nuunuhnuhnuhnnuh and she jams her jaw abruptly shut, with an audible 'click'. She stops straining desperately towards him. She leans back, back off her knees onto her ass, she sits down and just stares, for the moment blank again, like when he first had her tongue.  
Then he does the thing. The too-far thing that makes this unbearable.  
Dave Strider smiles. He fucking beams at her, laughing through his teeth but it's genuine, and not even harsh [oh wait no of course it's just circled all the way back], and it's so wrong and it makes her so mad and a little lightheaded because it's so [Davey] Not Dave [oh, right] that it makes her self-conscious like he's a stranger [right right of course] and it's not FAIR [fair?], it's not fair for him to be so composed while he's destroying her like this. [What's 'fair' to a street-walking whore like her?]

[She hurts like she hasn't hurt since she doesn't know when. Well, the last time would be the last time they did this. She knows what she's really searching for is the first time. She spirographs, stretching out to be more at once than she otherwise could, unfolding to remember. It's not a black hole. It's not the pain of Grandpa (black hole covered in razor-wire) and it's not quite the pain of John and Davesprite (black hole on fire at the bottom of the ocean). But she remembers both strongly when she tries to name it. She remembers delicate hand manipulations, stressing her dexterity. She doesn't understand it and she spirographs and she still doesn't understand it and now also knows she also doesn't understand why she needs it. She winds back up. Maybe she needs it exactly because she's never had it in her life, and never honestly will. Maybe it's her juju. Or maybe the opposite, maybe it's... she doesn't know.]

[She gets it, it clicks. For at least a moment she is at least a little bit actually Jadiah. She feels that particular flavor of pain they must have thought she was after. That they were right in thinking she was after. That they've given her. She takes a moment to weep silently and love them for it, both of them because all BS aside she knows this wouldn't be possible without Dirk, if nothing else without SOMEONE reffing and he's the one who it is so that's that.]

She takes a deep breath.  
[But then she puts it away. Because seriously enough is enough, and one way or another she needs to get off now. If this goes much further she'll get to the point she won't be able to stop weeping until it's over. It's happened before.]

She opens her mouth  
"Bec-" [fuck!]  
and Davey slaps her, not [masterful] like the backhand before, just an open-handed slap across the cheek. It will barely raise a mark. It does stop her from uttering the irrevocable, just long enough for him to lean in and whisper  
"Nakkodile."  
[and she hears it, the horror in him, the other side of this shared nightmare. The hell she's wreaking on him, how badly participating in her debasement is destroying her Knight. It's Dave speaking now, for the first time, and it's Dave holding nothing back and that one absurd word carries volumes. They're all essentially the same, and they're all way above her reading level.]  
[Her Private Library of His Devotions]  
['I can't, so you must; more.']  
["More."]  
before he's fully releasing her (she falls limp), standing and walking to the doorway. He pauses with one hand on to top of the jamb and the other [pushing up the shades that aren't there] pinching the bridge of his nose as though in annoyance [so smooth].  
"Night's just getting started, Princess. Get the shit out your hair and ears and get your ass upstairs. Time's money and your games are costing me mine."  
He's been wrestling in the shower with her for[ever] at least ten minutes and he's still bone dry. Of course most of his clothes will just shed water, which probably helps, but she's not seeing anything dewed between the scales, either. His arms and shirt are dry. He still hasn't sweat a single drop. Daddy's got it all handled. It's going to be OK. She closes her eyes.  
"Your outfit's laid out on your bed. I know it's probably asking the impossible, but please try not to wreck it with your sorry self."  
She hears him walk out, through the flophouse, and up to the top floor, before [he steps out] she loses track of him.

[She's run out of thought. She kind of wants to just go to sleep, but that is both very dumb and there's no way she even actually could. This isn't a blank, he's eliminated that possibility. So it's a breather. So she should breath. Ok.]

The beaten whore sits awkwardly against the tile wall of the prison shower block, weeping through her closed eyes, trying to control her haggard breathing as the cold water runs over her aching body.

[hehehehehehe oh god what the fuck is she doing]

The beaten whore sits awkwardly against the tile wall of the prison shower block, weeping through her closed eyes, trying to control her haggard breathing as the cold water runs over her aching body, but is unable to stop herself from giggling insanely.

[yes much better]

She reaches up behind her to turn the water off. Her arms feel the recent exertion, but they're not actually 'aching'. Her tit, however, that aches. She takes an inventory of her physical pains, and is surprised to find her face getting top billing, despite actually being presentable (probably not in a few hours), when she examines it in the mirror. Her pussy is definitely the big-draw co-star, though. ["The Burning Streets", Starring!: Jade Harley as '$2 Whore', Jades Face as 'moaning for cock', &! Jades Pussy as 'beat da fuck up'.] There are three small but unmissable bands of heat around the lower fingers of her left hand. Her pussy hurts, face hurts... ['and it's killing the audience!'... Thanks, Grandpa! And... fuck this. Magical girls don't do drawn out recovery scenes.]

She stands up, knees creaking, and walks out into the flophouse. She stands before her bed, and considers her fate. Three In The Morning. Fuck. So much for her hopes of his not dwelling on it. Or maybe it was Dirk who did the math, made the connections. That was kind of always his thing. Either way, the jig is up[, see?].

[ooooh fuck she's out of it. this may actually be a problem. no, this is definitely actually a problem.]

She's careful not to drip on it as she retrieves the necessities (shampoo and body-wash, all of it vitagel infused alchemized superstuff) and discards the superfluities (the last of her jewelry). [EFSCD-INT03 WARNING Dangerously low retained COM device count detected (2/6). ACK(Any Key) *q* IGN(y/n) *y* DUR(1-24) *4* MANUAL INPUTS ACCEPTED RESUMING BEHAVIOR PATTERN:'scrapbook'] She spares a few more minutes in the water (hot, this time) to run some straightening shampoo through her hair and massage her bruised labia. Her arousal has turned to frozen lead, but this quick function test confirms it's still there [waiting for his heat to melt it] should she need it.

She comes out fully refreshed, and with only the barest hint of yellow starting to fill in her cheek [easily covered with a bit of concealer, for now]. Of more concern is how her little 'function test' seems not to have ever fully stopped. At least the weeping has[, for now].

She stares at the dress. She returns to considering her fate. She thinks she knows where this is going and she hopes she's wrong - if they're doing THAT she's going to have to end it, super serious 100% for real this time. [Or maybe there just won't be anything to end, and that'd be the point. Synthesis. Dirk playing Rose.] Then again, they've been quite effectively surprising her all along, so far. How long ago was it she was relaxing her throat, as her lover pulled out her tongue?

[Davey "her lover" shit STOP, RESTART]

Jadiah stares at the dress. It fills her with foreboding. It's the kind of gorgeous she could never do justice, the inversion of her own glamour. She runs a finger across it and it [sighs] makes a strange little noise for her. The material is [literally magical] unreal, some kind of silky black felt that reflects no light at all except where it does, and where it does it's green. Jadiah doesn't actually know much about fashion, about clothes. She doesn't know fancy things. She doesn't understand how it sparkles that way, doesn't have the words to describe it [*transient projections through the membrane to the higher orders it envelopes* fuck, no, bad, down girl]. But she knows sexy when she [feels it] sees it, and this dress is damn sexy. No, that's not right, she understands sex just fine. She is *the best* at sex. What this dress is, that Jadiah ain't had a minute of in her life, is concentrated eroticism. It's a work of [negative space] not-sex.

She's going to disappoint the client, which means she's going to disappoint Davey, which makes her want to cry [whoa no hold on]. She only sniffles, though, because regardless of how she feels about it she has a job, Davey's told her what she needs to do and Davey is here to take care of things for her, Davey knows best. She trusts in the Davey who trusts in her. [She puts on the damn dress, already. She notes with despair that the matching shoes could double as climbing pinions, and then with appreciation that they are both also computers. Whatever, it's not like she's going far.] She accessorizes herself with a black nylon [compu]clutch. [Six again. Good.]

[She's surprised by how surprised she is by how it fits. Of course it's a recreation (the original didn't have a tail-hole, for starters, and was cut for a 13-year-old girl besides), but whatever he did to make it captured the material of the original so perfectly she'd forgotten to notice it. She'd forgotten how completely the spinning blades of vaporized aerosol cans can destroy something so magical, had forgotten for just a moment the horrible absurdity of her ascendance and all the horror and absurdity of all the intervening years. All the fucking barbasol bombs that had made up so much of their lives.]

[Yeah, they're totally doing The Stupid Thing, aren't they?]

She [Jadiah] returns to the bathroom to examine herself in the mirror-wall. Jadiah examines herself in the mirror. She looks like a billboard model and it freaks her right the fuck out. Goddamn, girl. Jade lipstick [gives it a quick swing first, barbasol bombs floating in her mind] and a touch of simple black eyeshadow are all she needs to complete a reasonable approximation of 'all done up' [and ready for bed]. She looks in mirror at an image of [exhaustion] beauty. Her [dark] sultry gaze scans her own [spongy and wrinkled] delicate flesh. [The concealer is already starting to lose the battle with blossoming purple swell that will probably leave her squinting all day tomorrow.] The dress wraps her like the paper lining around one of the single roses they sell at newsstands. [She feels wilted. Loose, floppy.] She is flushed all over and shaking slightly and she doesn't know if this is sexual arousal or nervous exhaustion [or if her confusion of the two isn't some core component of the psychological malfunction that's driving all of this].

The short walk across the room and up the stairs just feels heavy. She goes barefoot, carrying the shoes and only putting them on outside the door. It takes her a moment [whoa fuck] and an almost-spill back down the stairs to find her footing, she takes one final deep breath [Jadiah.], and then she sweeps into the parlor.

Davey is waiting for her in the center of the front reception/waiting room. He's pulled out the office chair from behind the desk and straddles it backwards, leaning over the back. He's regained his ostentatious uniform, the red jacket with silver fur crawler, the alligator cowboy hat with the black feather sticking from the silver fur band. [He's glorious.] A cane[sword] with a sculpted crows-head for the grip dangles loosely from his hand. [Fuck no. Fuck no they are not going to strife. If he really thinks that's where this is headed she's going to teleport him to one of the moons and use it as her dildo - no, as his!]

He beams at her.  
"Oh goddamn yeah you're the right one. Lookit you!"  
[Not what she was expecting.]  
"If I'da known you cleaned up DAT good I'da had you running the society circles months ago! Jee-zus."  
She feels her [bruise swell] face flush even deeper.  
"Davey, I..."  
"Hey now Princess."  
He straightens up, and gestures her to one of the sofas against the wall. She sits, one hand on each knee.  
"No, you cross them."  
"What?" [What?]  
He stands and repositions his chair, this time facing the right way. He leans his cane against the wall, then sits back down directly in front of her. They're inches apart, with nothing between them.  
"When you sit, you cross your legs.", [oh, yeah that was silly of her, especially in this partic-] he demonstrates.

He reaches out and up under her dress to grip her bare right leg just under the knee and just over the ankle. She tenses, her fingers [three burning] digging into the plastic cushion, but does not resist. [It's Davey.] She gives a closed frown but keeps her eyes locked to his. He pulls it up and out, stretching it straight [over his shoulder, please] to his side, until it's taut and the right half of her dress has fallen back to pool around her waist. She shudders as the chill of fresh air on her still-hot [and rising] nethers reverberates through her.

He holds it still just long enough to give an appreciative glance, before bending it back in and over her left knee. His hand comes to rest there first, and he lets it slide along the length of her calf [he gives the barest twitch as he crosses the invisible band just before the half-way point, the millisecond between the recognition of an incongruity and its reconciliation] as the rest of her leg follows. The chill is smothered in her own warmth once again, but now it's him doing it and that makes it HOT. He shifts his hands as he settles her legs together into a resting twine, one cupping each knee. She wiggles to assist him, and to try and relieve what is suddenly too much pressure on her much too engorged clit, but it only adds motion to the press, and she jerks back involuntarily into the couch. The sudden action in turn unexpectedly pinches her lips right at one of their existing contusions, and she yelps, squinching her eyes closed [no tears no more not allowed] and trying to throw her legs apart.

Davey holds them closed. She's caught in a feedback loop, his hand on the switch.  
"Yeah that's it.", he laughs. "We're getting right to the heart of the business right here."  
She rocks and moans, masturbating without hands, without control, just like a half-clever animal.  
"Your boy practically asked for you by name. 'A Lady Losing Control'."  
Like a bitch in heat, rutting the floor.  
"I know how to listen for what matters. 'Lady', you ain't, but I reckon we'll get you by with the fixins and a little crash course in 'remedial etiquette'." ["ettiket" god he should have been in pictures]  
He throws her legs open and holds them there. Thankfully[?] no chill rushes in, this time, as she's sure at this point any shock would tip her over.  
"And when it comes to 'losing control', I can't think of any slut more capable than Jadiah Halley."  
She reopens her eyes, and mouth, to give him, something, sharp, but, all that can come out, is,  
"Suh-suh-suh-suhwarry, Day-heeee-veeeeee..."  
[and she feels the first cool of them running down her burning cheeks ooooooh nooooooo]

"AH FUCK, BITCH!"  
He stands suddenly, throwing his chair back and his hands to the ceiling.  
"YOU REALLY ARE COMPLETELY FUCKING USELESS!"  
"Day-huh-vee noooowuh im suh-huh-reeee"  
Then they're on her, clasping her mouth shut and tweaking one of her dog-ears, hard. He leans into it to whisper. Fully into it, covering his mouth like a doctors mask, and it tickles and buzzes uncomfortably.  
"come on jade pull through it, just a little longer" [he's explosively loud in her head and he's 100% Dave, and if the one word before was enough to pull her through then she figures this relative cornucopia must count for at least as much. It doesn't feel like it (he sounds genuinely annoyed with her, now, and that's too Davey, just makes her want to cry more), but she'll still try.]

She sits, covered in his [whose?] hands, her own gripping bunches of dress at her sides. She sits locked in place by his talons, and stares at the wallpaper, and makes herself still. It's a tessellation, a simple half-off grid tessellation of pink Hearts [actually Hearts, Dirks Hearts, fractured so you can see through them], over some other more complex baroque pattern in shiny olive [rising vines? Life?]. It's garish, the way the simple shapes obscure that intricately twisting chaos. She imagines them wilting and browning behind the Hearts, denied their life-light. It's a beauty she could do without.

Her heart slows, the heat bleeds out [and she can smell it, her, can he?], the fire between her wide-spread legs burns down to [still red hot] coals, as though lending its heat to her burning face, driving away the last of her unwanted tears. He's still in her ear, has taken to idly biting her ear-hairs, just pinching them between his teeth, not quite cutting [control, the Strilonde constant]. It doesn't feel like anything. A bit of nothing buried in the constant annoyance of his mere presence there.  
"mmph" [oh, ha]  
She licks a cross into his palm, a signal for release. [Shit, this is the second time he's muted her, in one night. Her index finger lights up. Signals-Consorts-BABIES, babies,-Restraints...]  
"Dave, " [whisper now] "we've gotta wrap this up."  
He pecks her on the corner of her mouth.  
"Your wish is my command, Princess."

And then he jumps [steps] back from her, like she's burnt him, [and there's the flicker, again] and Davey is suddenly pacing the small chamber, muttering to himself.  
"Shit, maybe I was wrong. Maybe I should play this the other way, go get one of my ice maidens and have them play up the mania."  
"no Davey please i can do th-"  
"Shut the fuck up bitch, don't interrupt me when I'm thinking. Maybe Terla, [who?] she's got that smile..."  
He suddenly crouches down next to her.  
"You seen Terla today? What kinda mood she in? Trouble with Terla is she's such a natural fucking dom, made for it, put a crop in her hand and she's just, *there*, and when she's got some poor bastard tied up on his back and he's covered in welts and she lets herself go a little wild with the ride-em-cowboy it's endearing, it's goddamn *cute*, and that's what this kid really wants, but..."  
He's looking at her and doing business with [Terezi] another girl, who isn't even there.  
"Jadiah. JAH-DEE-AHH. Broke you, huh? Should've known better than to think YOU needed any help getting hot. Jadiah the fifty-hitter, Jadiah the dog-fucker. Stupid."  
He gives her one last sneer and then goes back to pacing. She stares at the wallpaper. [It's not a black hole.]  
"Well get the fuck out, then. Go, git gone. Go to sleep or get back out on the block or pack your shit and GO, I don't care. Got no time for bitch troubles any more, I've got..."  
He pulls down a sleeve to check one of the three watches there, faces against his wrist.  
"maybe fifteen minutes to get one of my pros up here to salvage this mess."  
[Professional. Doing Business.]  
[Hearts over Vines. Love over Life.]  
[And it's a lie. It's showmanship, advertising. This place is a Business.]  
[It doesn't swallow her - she swallows it.]

She crosses her legs [just a buzz, Jadiah, nothing to get worked up about]. She retrieves her clutch from where it had fallen forgotten beside the couch. She snaps it open, retrieves her compact, looks at herself in the [screen] mirror and does some math herself, on tidying herself up.  
Davey's on his phone, yelling something to someone. Not one of his girls, one of his runners or house-mothers. He's turned half-away and gives no sign of noticing her.  
She punches in some commands and feels the clink in the clutch as it appearifies the requested items from her wardrobe downstairs. First is the packet of moist wipes, and with a few deft swipes she clears out the wreckage of her tears. She considers a moment, and then decides to take out the shadow entirely. Total rebuild. Then she goes to patching, laying in new supports. She reinforces the understructure, liberally applying concealer over the now fully enflamed bruise. She's left with too many load-bearing struts, in awkward places, but she hangs a nice picture on them with just a touch of rouge. [She decides somewhere along the way that Jadiah must have had a large family, brothers who worked construction, and through them had gotten some acquaintance with interior design. It's the first and only bit of past the poor girl's got, and it feels strangely pleasant to do the giving. It feels right. The more she gives Jadiah, the more she can do for Jade.] She decides to go for some mascara, this time, and is immediately gratified when she bats them. Yes, the blinds really do pull the room together, so obvious in hindsight.

She looks for Davey. He's moved to the desktop computer on the central desk, clicking and typing furiously as he re-arranges schedules, growling curses and oaths into the phone now held up awkwardly wedged between face and shoulder.

[Jade examines herself in the mirror. It's a total pig-sty. She's never managed to look more like a jacked-up, fucked-out street whore yet. And yet, right now, this does nothing (very little) special for her. All she wants is to lay back in the musty, half-broken recliner, kick the pile of empty beer cans off the coffee-table, put her feet up and drift away to the soothing sounds of screaming welfare checks playing out in the dirt yard beyond the open window, as chopped and muted by the box fan hastily nailed there in place of an actual AC.]

[Oh she really has been spending altogether too much time with that peculiar Mr. Strider.]

She closes her eyes, sighs and permits herself the smallest of smiles[, in place of a laugh]. When she opens them again, and sees herself again only now with that small, contented, confident smile in place, everything has changed. The blinds have opened, spilling sunlight over the space, and suddenly everything but that light, her lips and her eyes, is washed out and insignificant by comparison. Just background.

She snaps her compact shut loudly, shoves it back in the clutch loudly, stands [nearly stumbles loudly, grips the couch loudly, has a very loud internal debate about whether to lose the damn shoes already or not, decides not and signifies the victory of her obstinance] with an underwhelming patter of stamps. [Seriously though fuck these things she can't even st-]  
Davey is watching her over the top of the computer screen, one eyebrow raised.

Her heat rises with that look [Daves look!], all of them throughout her body, but she bites back the whimper that wants to come out in response. She's got a job to do. She keeps the smile on.  
"Tell me about the client."  
His other eyebrow raises, along with the corners of his mouth, but he says nothing. She glides to his side, still keeping the desk between them, not about to get in his way, but pointedly putting herself in his reach. She leans over the desk, presenting her cleavage, props her chin in one hand and lets the other fall open palm-up, fingers loosely curled.  
"Davey, tell me about this 'Legitimate Client' that's got you so worked up you're scrambling around for THAT psycho bitch to come and replace your top girl."  
He gives a single bark of laughter, then speaks into the phone.  
"Call you back. No, yes, still do it. I don't know, I'll get back to you."  
He drops the phone into his hand, ends the call, and then leans back, folding his hands behind his head. He silently considers the ceiling just long enough to annoy.  
"Davey..."  
He snaps back to her with such speed she's bracing for the slap when she hears instead  
"He's a prince." [A-HA!] His eyes bore into hers and it's the most unguarded she's ever seen Davey. The closest thing to afraid. "Youngest son of one of the Derse families." [They're really doing it.] He takes her open hand, examines her palm, traces a line. "It's a personal favor to his brother, who's..." He folds her hand closed, pats it. "not a man to be crossed." [They're actually making this happen.] He sighs deeply. "He's going to be here -" glance at the screen "- any minute. We can delay a bit, and we'll probably need to regardless, but..." he goes stone again, back to the Davey she's used to "Jadiah, can you do this?"  
She's still reeling from the [confirmation] news. [Oh these two lovely idiots. No, scratch that, this lovely idiot right here and his genuinely fucked up creepy deluded disaster of a brother and dungeon master and apparently would-be psychologist.]  
"Jadiah." He squeezes her fist, tight. "If you fuck this up it's a world of shit for me," He leans in, close, and her tongue seems to be of the impression it's about to find home again, so she bites down hard to contain it and finally loses her grin. "and I assure you, you will be at the very bottom of the hill."

[You can take the boy out of the painfully mismixed metaphors...]  
Her grin comes back.  
"Davey, do I look like I'm going to fuck this up?"  
His response is to dart his eyes all over her face.  
"Okay."  
He's up and pacing again before she has time to really consider the straightforward softness of that acquiescence.  
"Just don't cry. When you sit you cross your legs. Speak softly, I know you can." punctuating with back-hands to his own palm "And that doesn't mean 'don't talk'. You can actually talk about probably pretty much anything..." he stops dead, a man in the grip of a revelation "Jadiah, you can't make small-talk about sex. You have to-" he stops talking to wave his hand in a circle "-around it."  
He stares at her, a picture of dumbfoundedness. The man realizing he's verbally explaining subtlety to his dog.  
She stares back, her smile blossoming into a shark-grin to rival [fuck what did he call her?] Terlas.  
There's a knock at the [stairwell, heh] door.

He spares the time for a single curse before straightening out his hat and crawler and striding confidently over to answer it. He puts his eye to the peepglass [what why come on] before turning back to her with a grimace.  
"Jadiah. Just don't be yourself."  
She just keeps on smiling.

He opens the door, and invites the stranger in. Dave Strider steps into the room.  
"Sup."  
Blonde hair, black jeans, red-sleeved/white-bodied t-shirt with 8-bit scratched record screen-printing. Aviators. [Yep, that's her boy.]

[The Stupid Thing has been Achieved.]

She steps forward and curtsies, offers her hand.  
"You must be the brave Sir Dave."  
He takes it, bends straight at the waist to lay a kiss on the back.  
"Indeed, my lady, which would surely make you the fair Lady Jade... eyah. My lady." He smirks at her, at the two of them, then turns it on 'Davey'.

To his credit, he's not actually gaping. No, he seems to be following the plot, even through its terminal twist. He's still turning an ingratiating shade of purple [maybe they'll match!], and no one could confuse his absolute rigidness for a poker face.

Dave raises his shades to give his past-self a wink, and then is gone like a wink himself, blinking back out of time. Jade slips out of her heels before walking up to [Purple-]Dave [holy shit literally purple this is too perfect] and draping herself over him [like molesting a statue holy shit hahahaha]. She tosses aside his crawler [over by the sword and her clutch, and it's kind of a pretty picture that corner, right at that moment, cover art material], then his hat [perfect landing on the desk fuck year]. He's not looking at her. He's staring at the wall [old news, babe, time to move this along]. She can see the veins popping up along the rigid muscles of his neck.

She curls a hand there, tracing them. [Oh, poor Davey.] She leans in to his ear, and just breaths on it, slowly, letting him feel the heat. Then she takes a deep breath and [let's put that woofer to work] "NAKNAKNAKNAKNAKNAKNAKNAK- " deep breath " -NAKNAKNAKNAKNAKNAKNAKNAK- " [come on coolkid] " -NAKNAKNAKNAKNAKNA-"  
"ARGH, FINE!" he shoves her away, breathing heavy. "FUCK! JADE!"  
He's holding his ear and glaring daggers and it's all she can do to stop from giggling.  
"SO YOU WANT MORE?! YOU WANT IT EVEN WORSE?! THAT'S WHAT YOU'RE TELLING ME?!" [oh fuck he's actually mad]

"Becquerel, Dave. If that's better."

He's hissing and she can tell, she just *knows* that those are words he can't let her hear. [Little baby snakes, the ones with the strongest venom.] His restraint is pretty damn silly, considering... but maybe that's also why she should just trust it for the moment. [Considering...]

"Dave. Babe. What I'm saying to you. Is..."  
She hikes up her dress, juts her hips forwards as impudently as possible, presenting her grossly swollen cunt [and ew it's really pretty gross, just slimy and she really should have waxed before this, it's like a sick... amphibious, mammal?]. She draws a finger up through her gash [feverish], dragging an arc of fluid [sweating] off with it to briefly glisten in the air [delirious].  
"let's just fuck now, ok?"

[Only GOD she's SO overstimulated, so stupidly sensitive she's not sure she even can. She's shuddering just from that casual touch and that's with her artfully dodging the sore spots and keeping well away from her clit. Probably she'll come the second he gets hands on her and then be out for the night. Oh poor, poor Davey.]  
She gives him her best magical-girl grin.

For still another beat he just stares, still tense. For just the barest instant of moment she reciprocates, waiting for Dirk or a Future!Dave to intervene, getting ready to have to put her boy down herself [spirograph unwinding, reaching out and feeling him, reaching out and feeling green regalith]. This isn't normal. Dave just doesn't get mad like this.

Finally he slumps. All tension gone in one instant. [She doesn't think he jumped? Does it matter? Does she want to know?] "Sure, Jade. Sure. I'm, I'm, sorry? If I pushed you too far or too hard or, or..."

"Dave, no, no, it was, you [should've stopped in the shower] were, perfect. It's just over now."  
She's jumping in his arms now, and he's not a statue any more. Their lips meet and her gross giant dog tongue is pulling on its chain and simultaneously appearing in court making a very impressive argument for immediate release ["over now", "let's just fuck now", Your Honor PLEASE]. She pulls back. One thing still to do.  
"Ok, this last thing? Renting me out to yourself? Really fucking dumb. Unbelievably dumb. Worse than the nakkodiles."  
[Telling him that wasn't the one thing, but she does appreciate the eyebrow quirk it earns her. ("nothing could be worse than the nakkodiles?" - oh poor, poor ignorant Davey) They'll talk later. They've got a lot to talk about...]

She has her left hand flat on the desk, holding down a sheet of paper plucked from the printer. If she pays attention she can actually see the invisible bands of force pulsing there, compressing and releasing her fingers. One by one, she disbands them, as she writes down their payload. She goes in reverse order, and she underlines the last. Then she circles it, and draws a spiky halo around the circle. She stares at it as she flexes the hand back to normalcy.

[A lot to talk about. Later.]

["Some day..."]

AND THEN THEY FUCKED


	2. He just sits there, and watches.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He just sits there, and watches. Not two yards away. He watches very closely. He watches his bros rage. He watches the swap, so perfect he doubts even she caught it, and she's good at catching them.  
> He watches their awkwardness, coming down from the high of that finale. The light touches. When she kisses him it's chaste, and she pulls away too quickly.  
> "ok, this last thing? renting me out to yourself? really fucking dumb. unbelievably dumb. worse than the nakkodiles."  
> He listens even closer than he watches. She's speaking directly to him, as much as to Dave. It's a harsh rebuke, 'If THIS is what you're going to do we'd be better off without you.' She would be right, if she were right about what 'this' is.

He just sits there, and watches. Not two yards away. He watches very closely. He watches his bros rage. He watches the swap, so perfect he doubts even she caught it, and she's good at catching them. [EFSCD-INT08 RETROLINEAR WARNING Future Strife Event Detected ETA 00:00:04:13:44 Threat Level: NULL-HIGH Primary Aggressor: TG(2) ACK(Any Key) *p* MANUAL INPUTS ACCEPTED RESUMING BEHAVIOR PATTERN:'objectiveoriole'] He gets a notification of an impending strife four hours from now, the tail end of his scheduled Dave Maintenance time for this production.

Poor Dave. He had such hopes for this. Dirk feels guilty about having had to lead him on, but knows that ultimately he's going to be getting what he wanted, and better, because this way (Dirks way) she'll keep getting what she needs as well.

He watches their awkwardness, coming down from the high of that finale. The light touches. When she kisses him it's chaste, and she pulls away too quickly.  
"ok, this last thing? renting me out to yourself? really fucking dumb. unbelievably dumb. worse than the nakkodiles."  
He listens even closer than he watches. She's speaking directly to him, as much as to Dave. It's a harsh rebuke, 'If THIS is what you're going to do we'd be better off without you.' She would be right, if she were right about what 'this' is.

She starts the first of her post-game rituals, the removing of the ties. Only four? That's not a good sign. She was supposed to be so distracted she couldn't get out of her own head. He was expecting more. He'd actually had a plan for dealing with potentially dangerous infarction. He leans in and toggles view modes to read her sheet. Ah. Or maybe that first strike was just too strong. Early domination, and that one thought forced out all others. He feels a bit guilty for exploiting her that way, especially without any serious consideration of the issue itself.

Babies. Huh. He has his own thoughts and feelings about that, and to say they're Not Jades is probably exactly correct. DirkThought.babies == !JadeThought.babies. When he'd planned this production he hadn't given the feelings themselves much consideration beyond that he knew they were strong. If he's honest with himself, trying to put himself in that headspace is highly uncomfortable. It's that way with a lot of Jade. Regardless of his feelings, it's clear he'll definitely have to, now. The price of his hubris.

He watches Daves poker face as he sneaks a glance of the sheet, and it's difficult-to-miss key feature. It's a really good one, which probably means he doesn't have strong feelings one way or the other, or that he's intensely conflicted. He feels a little personal gratification, either way, a small satisfaction at the fact at least his bros not right on the same page as her. He immediately loathes himself for it, and doubly commits to fully trig and account for Jades motherhood impulses.

He watches them rejoin, much less hesitantly now but still somewhat reserved. She's laying kisses all over his face and neck while whispering him devotions and reassurances. She pulls off his jacket and shirts and then gets back to his mouth for one long 'romance kiss', which lingers past its prime, toying with becoming something else. Which it does, as Jade starts her second ritual. She goes bug-eyed as something ineffable happens in their mutual mouth, Daves cheeks popping briefly before settling into a continuous vibration. He's never been able to get a good read on Dave, during this part, but he never seems as surprised as Dirk feels he could be. She's dead still, clinging to him like a baby monkey (his mouth the teat) as he slowly waddles them to the couch. Dirk can't help but steal a shot, every time. Some day, once he has enough, he'll pack them together into the best-selling coffee-table book in the history of the universe. (Total Sales: One Unit, to Dave and Jade. Of course.)

They fall onto the couch and Jade churrs on impact, like it knocked something loose (which in a way it did, as it was only at the last possible safe second she pulled out of him)  
"shit dave i'm sorry i'm really not gonna last long"  
to which Dave replies  
"and whose fault is that? can't take the blueballs, shouldn't have done the hour-long one-sided foreplay."  
she giggles and punches him playfully, but is frowning  
"one sided?"  
she's sliding her other hand up the crotch of his pants, trying to grope but getting trouble from the stiffness of the material.  
"jade, let's not do this now."  
He's not even trying any kind of concealment; that's pain and anger. Jade takes a moment to consider, then nods with dead-serious mock-gravity (unintentionally insincere; unknowingly incapable of the expression he's actually only aping). Dirks heart pangs, and it takes him a moment to realize it's from looking at Jake.

It passes as they get back to making out - though from Dirks perspective there's still an impressive lack of 'out' happening. Jake could NEVER be confused for this beast. He's seen her do this before of course, and the shower scene tonight has given him new insight into just how oral she may be (that tongue thing was all Dave, and Dirk feels something like pride in him for it), but this intensity is still surprising him. Dave is having to get quite physical in pushing her away for breathers, and every time he does she's growling right through her obvious shortness of breath.

They started close and after every bout she winds up a little bit closer, and every time she's taking more and more little schooches to do it. She's restraining herself from a full-on dry-hump, but she does soon make it fully into his lap.

The next breather it's her pushing away. Dirk hits the record button before he consciously recognizes the incongruity - the self-strain between her neck and arms. It's a trope that sounds nice on a page, but its literal occurrence is most definitely more the realm of symptom than romance. Her unique chimerism seems stable (in that absurd self-supporting way of everything about The Game), but it's still been at the top of the Medical Mystery Board since its inception, and work for The Board is Dirks real main contribution to their micro-society. Possible harm overrides any concern for privacy, but he's still glad it was this relatively tame, fully clothed shot, of all the possible instances that day.

It passes, and as expected she's no worse for wear, hasn't even noticed it. He turns off the recording as she pants out  
"dave"  
He's holding her under her arms, rocking her gently, not masturbating her but just the opposite, carefully keeping her most sensitive parts airborne and untouched.  
"it's ok, jade. let it go."  
"want you in me. even for a moment."  
He nods and holds her out (effortlessly), presumably for her to fumble open his belt and fly.  
Instead she slides herself back off him and goes to her knees and then her back, hitching her dress up over her head, revealing her nude form in full (clothing inverted). She wraps big handfulls of it in her arms (Dirk hadn't realized there was that much play in the 3AM, wonders if there isn't some unconscious Power use at play here, or if she's just obliviously destroying it in her thoughtless need. He'll have to take a look at the dress after to be sure.) and pulls it taught over her face. Dave follows her down, knee between her legs and hands aside her head, but still carefully not touching.

Her mouth is pulled open wide in one interminable exhalation - she's not breathing. It raises an alarm which is only noted - Dave seems to know what he's looking at, and he's only grim (annoyed?), not worried. Dirk puts himself in Dave, sees as he sees. She is a relief carved out of starlight. An icon of agony, something to guard a tomb. She holds the pose for one long moment, back arching slowly, before her breath finally hitches back in as she falls, moaning  
"the mask."

Now Dave finally makes contact, quickly slapping a hand over her mouth (still through her dress) and leaning into her dog-ear to hiss as quietly as he can  
"he's still watching." (Of course Dirk still hears it, though. He hears everything.)  
Jade just shakes her head out from under him, really whipping it, turning her dress into a time-trail blur (probably giving herself rugburn, and it has to hurt against her bruises).  
"dont care"  
Is she crying under there? He could adjust viewmode and find out, but reminds himself he's not here to play voyeur. He's listening for  
"dave please"  
something in particular, and then he'll be gone. Not Jades moans.

Dave groans as he (so tenderly) pulls down the dress to get at her head. Dirk keeps listening closely. Her hair is thick with charge (Dirk can see it, faintly, running over her scalp) and sticks to it strongly, and she hics as he has to tug it loose, winces her eyes shut at the light and air and yes, there are the tears. She keeps her eyes squeezed shut tight. He gestures strangely in the air (the hard muscles of his arm sliding elegantly under his skin, an anatomical study in motion), which Dirk recognizes as a sylladex manipulation, then pauses and speaks aloud to the room  
"don't suppose you'd just fuck off for now?"  
directly to Dirk. Dirk doesn't know if he's really expecting a response, and doesn't want to jar Jade who surely isn't, and his throat's a little tight. So he doesn't. Respond. He just sits there, and watches.  
After a moment Dave sighs out a curse of concession and produces the mask.

Dirk is (impressed proud confused disappointed jealous) affected. How did they manage to keep THIS from him?

It's a hard black rubber sphere with a neck-hole, totally featureless but for two small nose-holes and a bulb-type air pump sticking out the side. It's definitely custom kit, and he wonders how they made it - alchemized, or the much more intimate process of hand-building ("The Mask", he realizes, capitalized...)? Then he wonders WHO made it. His read of the situation is that this is just yet another element of Jades emotional masochism Dave genuinely does not like, but at the same time this design speaks of an awareness and detachment he hadn't thought Jade possessed (would never be capable of), with regard to her own kinks. Then he wonders, again, how the HELL they kept this from him. How has this not come out yet, at one of their past sessions? "The Mask", a title, an entity.

It's sitting beside her as Dave goes to work on the prep. She's unresponsive, eyes and lips both squeezed tight. He's putting in ear-plugs (including custom ones for her dog-ears, which Dirk is man enough to admit is absolutely fucking adorable) and eye-guards, shallow curved plastic disks. He lays a final kiss on her forehead, and she rasps  
"don't stop. not until you finish. promise."

He doesn't promise. He slips it over her head, fiddles the nose-holes (connected to tubes inside, Dirk surmises) into place, and then is sure to get her hand in his before he starts pumping. They lie there together on the floor, in total silence, only their breath (Daves haggard and catching, now, Jades coming out the two tiny holes whistly and slight) and the squeak-squish-squish of the pump for Dirk to listen to. Dave closes his eyes and caresses her knuckles. He's waiting for (asking for) a signal, the sign of 'enough'. Dirk wonders if The Mask has any kind of safety release valve, any maximum pressure, and from the look of Zen concentration on Daves face as his squeezes gradually slow, he suspects not. He has no real idea how any of this works and just has to trust Dave. He really wishes they hadn't kept this from him. If nothing else, he could at least surely help improve the design.

The Mask stays rigid and round as he pumps, and Dirk is surprised by the lateness of his realization that it's doing pressure, not vacuum. Suddenly all the petting and caressing he's always given her makes perfect sense. Here Dirk had been thinking that was HIS thing, tenderness... turns out it was their compromise. Dirk suspects he may have just found his answer to at least one of his questions - he can practically hear her begging for more, more, and see Daves hands shaking as they press and squeeze, slowly bruising. The Mask would then be his solution.

She starts shaking, not arching or curling but just shaking all over, and Dirks mind jumps to medical fright again, but Daves calm reassures him. He's stopped pumping with the first shakes, and has thrown her dress back up to cover her encased head. He doesn't like the look of it? Her shaking settles into a more reasonable general arching, oscillating, not-quite-humping, and he finally gets his signal, a few drums of her fingers on the back of his hand. He gives a sigh of relief and moves to prepping himself. He sits up to her side, about her middle. He sheds his shoes and pants in a not-quite-flash (they go to join the rest of the discards by the couch), perfect efficiency but no exceptional burst of energy. He's wearing his lucky purple boxers, which Dirk notes as a bit out of place for the Davey character - what if the shower scene had turned hot? Well neither of them would have noticed it, is what would have happened (Dirk chastises himself for forgetting how greatly his perspective does differ from either of theirs). Anyway that doesn't matter because Dave's finally getting his cock out and Dirk is... (disappointed elated) surprised, that it's barely at half-mast.

Apparently the effects of The Mask, that pressure, include some reduced sensitivity. (Dirk is continually embarrassed at his total lack of experience with this. He doesn't have any context for guessing what degree of pressure, or the effects. Surely this existed already, back on Earth-That-Was?) Or, more likely, somewhere in all that shaking was her first orgasm (there's not ALWAYS the fireworks), and Dave is heeding her exhortation to carry through. Whatever the reason, Dave seems to think it's fine to break with the restraint he's shown so far, and get in some hands-on time. Prepping himself, now. He starts with her breasts, light strokes, practically breaths on the one scored with purple. (Actually, Jade's never been particularly sensitive there, has she? Partly a natural consequence of their girth, but watching Daves rigors now Dirk wonders if this isn't yet another subtle effect of her chimerism.) He gently tweaks and twirls her nipples. He leans in, between them, and just smells her, her skin, her sweat. Finally he suckles a bit, using his tongue and lips to give the bruised one the attention he didn't trust to his hands. The entire scene has the feel of ritual, a devotion, and Jade serves admirably as his alter, giving little discernible response to any particular stimulus. At one point he deliberately traced one of the lines of bruise with his tongue, which earned him a nice 'thunk' as she picked up and dropped her overweighted head.

All the meanwhile he plays with himself, pulling the shaft and stroking the balls, doing a really neat little twisting-ring motion which must feel pretty good right around the base of the head. Dirk appreciates Daves cock and balls, intimately - they're almost identical to his own, with the notable exception of being circumcised, where Dirk is uncut. Dirk knows just how he'd make Dave feel his most, and anything Dave is doing would work the same for Dirk. The subtle sharpening of his breath as he works himself up is, musical. The way he puts fingertips to the soft bottom of his shaft, once he's fully erect, Dirk has felt exactly that, he knows it. He wonders what it would be like to feel only one side of that perfect symmetry, the hand OR cock, while pressing or being pressed by (his) a warm, firm body, from behind. Dave pinches himself fully encircled, beneath his balls, and Dirk feels it too.

Despite her apparent absence during his ministrations, as soon as they stop she's active, blindly shoving him downward. He laughs out loud  
"alright, princess"  
and follows the silent order. As he transitions he trails his fingers down across her lightly defined abs, displacing the thin layer of fat which dulls them from true splendor. She responds with a side-to-side wiggle (giggling?), and then another 'thunk' when he gives her love handles a pinch. He sits up between her legs now, and has a perfectly adequate vantage for any type of intercourse he could want, but he doesn't lay a finger on her. He's hesitating.

(Dirk wants very dearly then to dip into her raw feed, to ride passenger to her copulation with... The Mask on. However brief that is. He knows how catastrophically stupid an impulse this is, knows from past experience the green static burn of her, how it's next to impossible to get anything comprehensible through it under even the best of circumstances and how it's only intensified by arousal. He knows that this is a burn which lingers, and that he can't afford the impairment right now. So he doesn't. He really wants to, though. He wants to feel it, to know it, to own it, trig it. The Mask. He snaps a close-up of it, and commits to wrestling the captcha out of Dave. Literally, if necessary. Probably he can just catch a look at the back of the card when he goes to re-log it, though. Fortunately.)

Dirk hasn't actually looked at it yet, and when he does now he's reminded why he nigh-exclusively favors men. Even going clinical, though, again, it doesn't look like arousal. He wants to get her an ice-pack and a comfortable seat while he runs some cultures. Dave seems to be feeling similarly - he clucks, looks around at no one, opens his mouth to speak directly to Dirk, but then thinks better, just shakes his head. Dirk gets the message regardless - 'you see what i'm dealing with?'. (Dirk knows better than Dave does. Dirk trigs it. Dirk, at his darkest and most unguarded, somewhat empathizes with it. It's why he's helping them in the first place.)

Dirk knows Dave well enough to tell when he's trying to joke past cognitive dissonance. Dave is not a homosexual. Some breeder instinct which God (that is to say, Skaia,) thankfully deigned to spare Dirk, but not his bro, doesn't have any problem at all with this particular hot mess in front of him. He leans into it, still careful not to touch, and breathes deeply. He's barely got his hands up, much less on her, when it's his mere exhalation which triggers... something. She jerks both her knees up and back, her feet straight up. Dave must be only slightly less surprised than Dirk, because he almost takes the (vicious and brilliant) double heel-kick head-on. Instead he barely dodges one and only manages to slow the other, taking a hard nudge from the back of his own hand.

He throws them both aside, snarling, then immediately thinks better and bundles them back up in his arms. She's back to playing a doll, and offers no resistance.  
"right. nak nak nak nak nak nak nak nak,"  
He positions himself between her lips. Her climactic fireworks start immediately, green sparks rising around the point of contact, as-yet invisible in the rooms bright ambient, but plain to Dirks enhanced vision. He wonders if Dave can feel it. He wonders what it feels like.  
"nak."  
Dave fully inserts himself in a single thrust, and she's gone immediately, and also more back, returned from that eerie doll-state to a near overabundance of motion, hugging herself and rocking out her orgasm, vainly kicking her legs against his back, her tail smacking back and forth across his thighs. Now there can be no missing the arcs rising from her bare flesh - they slide down to pool in the points of her elbows as she curls upward, jumping back out as she falls, in random directions but more often than not to Dave. Momentary beams of neon puncturing the space between them, suturing it shut.

Dave is just holding on, letting her move as she will, even though she's not the one in the good position for it. He responds to something Dirk missed (or maybe he just knows), and releases her legs, which instantly drop to wrap him. After that it's only a moment more of flailing before she tenses completely, curled up almost level to him, half fetal. She's glowing all over, a uniform brightness overlaying her. The beams flashing between them solidify together to a membrane, connecting them, placental. Her glow expands, perfect green rising slowly, a second Jade made of pure light growing outward from the meatcore, enveloping Dave and then the room, entirely blanking Dirks view.

It's never been like this. It is, Dirk must admit to himself, spooky. It's easy to forget how powerful Jade actually is. He takes the moment of blindness to dip his head slightly, looking down past the bottom of his frames, past his fingers. Sure enough, he can discern a green tinge. She's reaching through the walls, across a relative mile or more, and coloring the light of an industrial sun-lamp - on accident(, while unconscious?). Spooky powerful. He's about to move, lift his shades and see if he isn't getting his very own spectral visitation, when he hears the distinctive pop of her teleportation.

His eyes snap back to his frames, and he spends several anxious milliseconds cursing his meat as he waits for them to refocus. Sure enough, they're both gone. He doubts they even know where. He's forestalled from self-recrimination (for not having recognized her slow-motion displacement as it happened) by their timely re-appearance. They blink back into his world with no fanfare, and almost no sign of the literally universe-rending orgasm that just occurred Jade was right, about her stamina - from Daves penetration to their re-appearance perhaps forty seconds have passed.

Dave has started fucking in earnest, somewhere in the lost interval, silent and intense. He's staring at her bouncing breasts, and after a moment he abandons his grip on her hips to reach up and, throw her dress back up over The Mask. Without breaking his chestward leer.

Jade is also silent, of course, but from the way she's got her arms twined together at her back, held down by her weight, Dirk bets that's not just The Mask. The ecstatic agony she's in will have taken all control, left her shocked silent still OR screaming thrashing, and he's just had a memorable education in what Jade-out-of-control-screaming-thrashing looks like. She is still bleeding sparks, running off her like bolts of sweat, but they're now igniting into (cold?) flame as they break contact and the impressive van-de-graff arcs have stopped.

Dirks eyes finish adjusting back, and he finally notices Daves burn - he's stained uniformly pink, now, which just gives a background contrast to his new white stripe of vertical bisection, the remains of their 'membrane'. Dirk fiddles his view filters again to try and gauge the severity of that scary-looking ambiguity, and is relieved when a bead of sweat wipes some away. He'll still be giving them both a full examination (they're definitely due for one of their regular rad-leeches, anyway), but for now it looks like it's just surface ash, not well-done Dave-meat.

Dave keeps pumping away gamely, Jade keeps bouncing and shivering silently. She's stopped hugging him in with her legs, but isn't kicking him off either. Her tail is the most expressive part of her, giving short little twitch-wags of canine warning. All in all she's taking it like a champ, as she probably should, after begging for it the way she did before. Still, Dirk pities her here. Dave doesn't look like he's holding back, but he's not beating any speed records and every thrust must be, unimaginable for Jade. His poker face is impenetrable.

"Jade. Jade, Jade, Jade oh god Jade."  
There is an apprehension of a turn to her face, but he catches himself. Instead he finally drops his gaze from her breasts, across her abs and to her mound, his chin on his chest watching her fill and empty to his beat. Sweat falls from his nose, to be lost in her hair, drops in the ocean of her own wetness. He squeezes his eyes shut, silently giving her his all. The soft slurps and squishes of sex fill in the vacuum. Dirk just sits there, and watches, the pale slide of his bros cock into her wet redness. Focusing on that point of contact, it's not so bad. It could be any orifice. It could be his own vigorously exercised boycunt, receiving Daves lov-  
*squeak*  
*squish squish*  
*squeeeeaaaeeeaak* it warbles out slowly, as she slowly releases the bulb. It's faint, tentative - it actually sounds guilty. Her other arm contorts awkwardly down, trying to fit her hand over her breast to match the pre-existing bruises, but the angle just doesn't work. Dave continues on obliviously, muttering her name. Dirk doesn't know if he should step in. Their squishes don't actually blend at all, once noticed, and the squeaks may as well be screeches. Dave also may as well be in a coma.  
*squish squish squeak*  
*squish squish* her hand clenches the bulb tight, trembling.

"Dave." Dirk speaks aloud to the empty room. Nothing is carried to Dave.  
He thinks quickly, pinging the desktop workstation (his mouth and hands and, if necessary, portal into the dungeon), but not waiting for the result to go about finding another way. He's pulling the spec for Jades stealthcompubands, confirming they do have speakers. He's got their unique device ids (no sense risking the compuclutch or her EFSCD catching it instead) and is working out the math for a cascade attack when his login request returns a success for his admin credentials. The desktop ping finally times out. (Jades lightshow, no doubt.)

Then he hesitates. How much longer could it be? How much danger is there, really? How much is everything going to change with one word, how irreversible will it be? Does he really need to, or only want to?  
*squeeeeeaaaaak squish squish squeak squish squish*  
"DAVE." (oh god is that him it's so hoarse, it's a croak and it's just what it would be if it really was his throat speaking it there from there really actually under him)  
Dave twitches in surprise, and then finally tenses in orgasm, pulling Jade into him, the last repetition of her name drawing out into a hiss. (His word that did it. Dave came with his voice in his ears. he's doing it again, he forgave himself Jake and he forgot and he's forcing himself on his friends, again, RAPIST, RAPIST, RAPIST)  
"JADE. FUCK JADE."  
(no. it's ok. nothing's happened, everything is fine.)  
He gives two more quick pumps, punctuations, and then slumps down and out of her, to land his face on her chest. No fireworks show from him - but Jade is picking up the slack. Her sparks have been regathering force for a while, now, through his fucking, no longer rolling but jumping off, and they're no longer just flaring out but actually audibly popping, micro-explosions in the air around them - literal firework mortars. Just for the two of them. (Dirk. Trig.) Now, with his completion and withdrawal, and her pumping away, they reach a critical mass. It's nothing like the first time, at least not to look at. This one just bursts, and then dies out.  
*squeak*  
She's doing her full-body shakes, again.  
*squish squish*  
She's still pumping it. She's stopped mauling herself and instead devoted her free hand to his head, not actually stroking but just burrowing into his hair. (It's a bizarre tenderness in this scene, turns the whole thing into something straight out of a shitty performance art routine, and Dirk is again compelled to dive her, because he doesn't have a fucking clue. Not one.) Her sparks start building again almost instantly, and just like that the wall of mystery around her has at least a crack - whatever it is she's thinking, more than anything she's feeling.

"SHE'S STILL PUMPING IT."  
Dave recovers quickly, barely showing his shock at the unexpected voice and the late recognition that he just came to it. He looks to confirm but already has her wrists in his,   
"jade no."  
pulling them away with him as he lurches over to his knees. She pulls back.  
"no, no. goddamnit, no."  
Dirk fears they're about to Strife. That would be Bad. He's not sure they ever actually have - Jade doesn't ever really strife with anyone. She simply cannot be beaten, and if she ever loses control...  
"DAVE, HOLD HER. I'M GOING TO DIVE HER."

"NO!"  
But he does lean in and hold her, hugging her tight. Dirk hesitates, honestly confused. Then she does finally still.  
"no, it's ok. she's ok now."  
He has the mask off quickly (and throws it over the desk, out of sight), but leaves her safety gear in place. She is immediately gasping, great big terrifying desperate breaths, entirely involuntary. Dirk isn't sure she's even conscious. She is pale as death. He spins her around and puts her legs up on the sofa, lays himself next to her with a knee propping up her butt.

They just sit like that for several minutes. Dave holding her tight and still, Jades breath working down to normal as her face ever so slowly colors. (Probably not her natural color.) Silent. Dirk just sits there, and watches them, a little aggravated. He turns on audio recording. This is what he's been here for. (All he's been here for. Right.)

The Talk. If they'd just get on with it.


	3. Meanwhile, In A Parallel UUniverse... STRIFE!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dirk fears they're about to Strife. That would be Bad. He's not sure they ever actually have - Jade doesn't ever really strife with anyone. She simply cannot be beaten, and if she ever loses control...  
> "DAVE, HOLD HER. I'M GOING TO DIVE HER."
> 
> [EFSCD-COMMAND *sudo connect savedplaces.people.GG(2)* *run rawfeed GG(2) null 2*]  
> Dirk dips in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is one of the two alternate-ending chapters, resigned to 'alternate' because they don't leave much room for the kind of continuation I'm considering. But I couldn't not write them. This one may come back unexpectedly.
> 
> Edit: formatting issue happened and a couple paragraphs of this were lost, originally. should be fixed now.

"SHE'S STILL PUMPING IT"  
Dave recovers quickly, barely showing his shock at the unexpected voice and the late recognition that he just came to it. He looks to confirm but already has her wrists in his,  
"jade no."  
pulling them away with him as he lurches over to his knees. She pulls back.  
"no, no. goddamnit, no."  
Dirk fears they're about to Strife. That would be Bad. He's not sure they ever actually have - Jade doesn't ever really strife with anyone. She simply cannot be beaten, and if she ever loses control...  
"DAVE, HOLD HER. I'M GOING TO DIVE HER."

[EFSCD-COMMAND *sudo connect savedplaces.people.GG(2)* *run rawfeed GG(2) null 2*]  
Dirk dips in.  
>[little baby snakes] The surface is just feed, and it's all he'd ever wanted to get at, before. [all she'd ever wanted] It is a mess of smooth sharp static, a dream [home no home for them] as seen through a broken NURB renderer. As soon as he's in he remembers why he'd sworn 'never again'. [forever, from now, press one button and forever] It's incomprehensible and it HURTS, she is [warm] atomic fire and she's going to burn out his brain. [shh baby find you hold you warm]<

Meanwhile, she doesn't lose control. Dirk watches without full recognition. He's in (all three) both places at once and it's not the kind of simultaneity he can break into slices and power through. [they have no venom it's not right it's not fair] He just sits there, and watches, but he doesn't perceive. His perception is fully occupied with [love] green fire. There's something important happening, a lot of motion, and he knows it must be strife. He knows she hasn't lost control because he still exists. He thinks. Fuck, he has to get out. He has to get out from this. [no be calm, shh, everything's ok now I understand now you're here to help me please be calm] Or, he can go deeper. Synchronize. [yes safe here home come to me EFSCD-COMMAND *sudo connect savedplaces.people.TT(2)* *run@this TT(2).rawfeed TT(2) null 0*]

Dirk feels himself falling back into a single stream as he is pulled under, and the relief of that stops him from resisting.  
>It doesn't hurt. It's just bright. Bright and green and everything made of cave art, living curves, dancing and singing. "Everything" is everything. All of creation is at his touch, and it is made of curves, curling around and through him AND OH GOD IT'S SO (pretty!). If he wants to, and he's careful not to (step on the flowers!) he can walk the Garden of Jade and look at anything, feel anything, be anything(, small.) (any nice little thing!) It doesn't hurt as they curl through him. They don't cut - at most they pull, just little tugs. A lot of them. (there's so many nice little things to look at!) Dirk walks, now, looking for Jade. (sweet little jade, who needs his help!)<  
Dirk falls forward, his elbows splaying out on the table, his head on his hands. He stares blindly at nothing.

Meanwhile, she doesn't lose control. She kicks, flailing her legs up and her ass to the side, pulling into a sideways curl with her heels aimed directly at his chest. Every motion issues a new burst of popping sparks, now clearly flowing specifically from the seams between her wood-rigid muscles, which are each and every one standing in sharp relief. She's going to use his own grip as the leverage - so he lets go. Her arms go back over her head and her legs do manage to twitch out towards him, but not enough to do any damage even if he weren't already on his feet and out of her range. He's back with his cane before he's visibly left. She rises to meet him, floating, her dress falling back down around her, restoring her decency and apparently having lost none of its own regality. She is a woman-shaped galaxy framed in green fire, the reflected light turning her normal ruddy tan to slate. Her black, spherical head now seems to grow quite naturally from the darkened flesh of her neck. It stares blindly, right at Dave. Dirk falls forward, his elbows splaying out on the table, his head on his hands. He stares blindly at nothing.

>He feels a lot of little tugs, and experiences his self-restraint from looking, from tugging back, as yet one more. Just one more, though. Ideas seem to be the smallest things. Human bodies in motion of strife, they're actually really fucking (frightening! fights are scary.) They've got a lot of hard tugs. He's learning. But he's not finding her. He could look and learn forever and never understand anything, and never find Jade. What was he even trying to do in the first place? (dirk is here to help jade! poor little jade who is angry and confused!)<

>And suddenly there she is. She's thirteen again, and all human, the 3AM a joke around her childs body, and humorously out of place in this barren white landscape. She's at a strange console, which Dirk recognizes as one of The Games frog-breeding devices. Is this LOFAF? Is this snow? She's standing very still, her balled fists pressed strangely into the slab of white stone she's repurposed as her workbench. (she needs your help!)<

>He walks around to look at her face. It's frozen into a funny shape, mouth open in something like surprise while her brows arch downward in anger. Frozen, he realizes, in the middle of a howl of frustration. (dirk the screen!)<

>Dirk looks at the screen. It's familiar, something he's spent a lot of time looking at in the past. Two black curves, spinning around each other with a four-color rainbow between them, and then two more intertwining, all shades of green. Dirk knows this, it's (so pretty!) It's entrancing, it's nice, to watch it spin and shiver, they're nice curves, elegant curves which hold so much, and as Dirk watches his stomach drops and he feels strange because they're actually pretty goddamn (complex! they're complex and fascinating and confusing! it's a really intriguing problem that dirk can't wait to help jade out with!)<

>But Jade isn't really there. She can't even tell him what the problem is. He can't help her if he doesn't know how. He reaches down to touch her, awkwardly aware of how small she is. God, they were infants when they played The Game. Dirk was never so young. When Dirk was her age he was already an adult, he'd been killing and not-dying for, forever. Could he have really been so small? (you're still small, dirk. everything is small and safe. help her.)<

>He makes contact, and she unsticks.  
"         !"  
Her curse completes, but remains silent. Then she notices his hand on her shoulder, and turns to look up at him, all goofy careless shock. Dirks heart pangs.  
"    !    '                 ?"  
(dirk help her.) Dirk has no idea what she's saying, but he nods. Yeah, he's there. Yeah, he'll help, of course, any way he can.  
"   '       !"  
She jumps up, suddenly right-sized, but still a kid, and she's just the right size to go smoothly into his arms. Dirk has to look away from her beaming face to get his bearings and confirm it's him that's shrunk. He guesses he was this small, once. (everything is small. everything is safe. dance with her.)<

Meanwhile, Dave decides to try talking her down.  
"Jade."  
She says nothing. She just floats there, black and burning. Even her flames are silent.  
"Jade, I want you to sit down."  
She floats. She burns. Her skin is most definitely actually black. It's not just a trick of the light.  
"Jade please sit down and release some of the pressure in your mask. It's not safe."  
Then Dave remembers she's in a sensory-deprivation mask. He remembers that he's actually an idiot. He wishes Jade were here. She'd know what to do. Dave only really knows one thing. He draws his sword.

>They dance. It's as awkward as it should be, two 13-year-olds stepping together in the snow. Now that Dirk has noticed his reduction it's pressing on his mind, he's trying to account for it even where he doesn't need to, and it makes him stumble constantly, even on the simplest of moves - which is all they're doing. Jade is overjoyed, giddy, regardless of how hard he bumps her, beaming at him and silently laughing right through even the time he actually steps on her foot.<

>Jade is definitely taking the lead, and seems intent to progress things at a pretty breakneck pace. They move from awkward stepping to awkward waltzing as they work their way across the landscape, leaving behind a long, slowly curling trail in the snow. Then she has them double back in a brisk tango, the snow breaking out in pockmarks under their fast footwork. Then they start again. Then again. Dirk marvels at their seemingly boundless energy. His lungs burn with the cold but it is only invigorating. He loses all track of time.<

Meanwhile, they dance. Dave steps to her, and she glides away. Dave steps past her, and she displaces to face him. When she can't move any further away, she displaces somewhere else in the room. Dave used to want to strife with Jade more than anything. It was the one forbidden fruit in their relationship, the one thing he couldn't share with her. This isn't strifing. He's coming at her with a sword, and even though he's only trying to cut off the bulb of her mask, that should still warrant more response than this. How is she even doing this? She just KNOWS. It's like she's a damn witch or something.

>Eventually they slow, and then stop. (thank you.) Their tango is over. Was it even a tango? Dirk remembers, suddenly, that he hasn't ever actually danced before. (thank you.) Ever, with anyone. He's never seen snow, either. What the fuck is going on? He looks to Jade as though she might give an answer (thank you.), but she's looking away, across the land stretching down and away all around them. Have they been dancing up and down a hill? How have they wound up at the peak, without his noticing? (thank you.) He tugs at her hand, trying to get her attention, but she's focused on the snow. He follows her gaze. All around them are curves, two sets of two, entwined together in a massive spirograph. (thank you, dirk.) In between the curves are countless dots, dashes, and squiggles. It's beautiful. It's so big. (dirk.) It's bigger and more beautiful than anything Dirk's ever seen, it's so many curves but they're all really one and (dirk i'm sorry.)<

Eventually, she stops. Her hands fall from their neutral pose, to stroke and curl around her gut. Like she's expressing fullness after a feast, or nursing a tummy-ache. Dave steps past her, producing two pops and a thud. The Masks bulb snaps off at the base and launches across the room, releasing the pressure inside. Dave displaces, folding into himself with the series of near-subconscious flashes (stars, green rock, the planet as seen from space) that typifies Jades teleporation. Jade falls.

>Something tugs, hard, snapping him out of his, something. Waking him up.<

>Was he asleep? He doesn't understand. What do you have to be sorry for? Dirk looks back to her, his heart racing. Jade? She's still looking away. Jade. He releases one of her hands to reach up and turn her chin. Jade please tell me what's going on. He stares desperately, he needs to find those brilliant green eyes, filled with confidence, an absolute absence of doubt. He needs to see and know that she understands. One of them has to. But there's just the pale skin of her eyelids. She's got her eyes closed. How was she looking with her eyes closed? He looks around again. God, it's so big. It's big like

They've always been there, an indiscernible bulk, then a multitude, then an inferno. All of creation, burning inside him, and he could [EFSCD-INT06 HOSTILE BEHAVIOR DETECTED IN EXTERNAL CONNECTION (GG2), CONNECTION TERMINATED]

Dirk snaps out of it slowly. He jumps back up to a seated position, his shades clattering to the table, where he has his hands pressed flat, wide apart, supporting him. He needs the support. He's shaking and twitching. One of his eyes doesn't want to open fully, so he lets them both stay closed. He's drooling slightly. He doesn't know where he is or who he is. It's like he's missing a bracket. He forces out a cough, because he thinks he might need to, even though he doesn't feel anything. He gropes for his shades, and feels better when he gets them back on, even with his eyes closed. He leans back in the chair, taking a much more relaxed posture than he had before. He needs to find out what's happening with Jade and Dave. To do that he needs to open his eyes. Why is that so hard? (Because it's impossible.)

He opens his eyes. Jade is lying face-down on the floor. Dave is gone. He blinks. Dave is still gone. Jade is still lying on the ground. He doesn't know what to do. He needs to call for help. He just sits there, and watches. (No, that's not right, he's blind. He's never seen anything in his life.) He's completely lost track of both of his charges. He's completely lost control of this production. Which ended several minutes ago. He's completely lost control of this private intimate moment between his two dear friends he was quasi-secretly perving on. He's fallen asleep in the middle of RAPING RAPING RAPING RAPING RAPING

He's panicking. He's just sitting there, most definitely NOT watching Jade slowly (rip her own head off) work off The Mask. He can't be because SHE DOESN'T HAVE EYES.

Dirk closes his, and is instantly relieved. Not totally, but getting rid of that aberrant input, that white noise, definitely helps. He can think more clearly when he's not trying to parse the impossible. He's under psychic attack. No, he has been psychically attacked. Attack's over. Attack succeeded. Got him sitting there not watching. Left him sitting there blissing out on not seeing. Well, he knows how to deal with psychic (venom) poison. Attacks. Why 'venom'? From where? FUCK GO [EFSCD-COMMAND *sudo behavior.securenuke*]

He dials up his strongest anti-hack/anti-psych combo countermeasure, a hard reboot and 40 seconds of petite mal. There's no sensation of absence, of having been gone, just EFSCD boot screens flashing past and he opens his eyes with relief and then is relieved that that his relief sticks rather than being immediately washed in that bizarre sight phobia. He actually breathes a sigh of relief. He's very relieved.

Then he actually sees. Jade is still laying on the floor. Dave is back, now, though, kneeling over her, who is covered and curled up in a pool of viscous red that Dirk takes to be her blood and vomit. Her face is mostly obscured in her hair, which spills freely around her, saturated with the ooze. What Dirk can see isn't pretty - what isn't ghostly pale is royal purple, and it's all bloated. Dave looks like shit, too, burnt raw and covered with broken blood vessels. But in comparison to Jades limp form he could be merely a drunk who passed out in the sun. Jade looks like murder - but she is breathing.

Extending away from them is a trail of the crimson ick, left by The Mask as it was flung away, hard. It rests now in a small puddle, against a wall now bearing an impressive halo of red splatter around a brand-new crater. The translucent red drips down over his wallpaper (which had lived in the back of his mind for months, and which he spent hours directly agonizing over, getting just right), washing out the Hearts to near-invisibility and turning the vines yellow-black.

He doesn't have time for this bullshit. He needs to be moving. He doesn't know if he can stand. He pings the desktop, and while he waits for it to time out he pages Jane. He pages John and Rose. He decides he may as well page Roxy and Jake, as well. (Get the whole family involved in this emergency aftercare for his S&M ERP session gone wrong!) The ping times out. He checks his message history, from his period of unconsciousness. There's only one entry.

"THE FOLLOWING MESSAGE HAS BEEN AUTOMATICALLY GENERATED AS A RESULT OF A FAILURE TO ACKNOWLEDGE AN EFSCD SYSTEM INTERRUPT, WHICH IT TRANSCRIBES: [EFSCD-INT08 RETROLINEAR WARNING Future Strife Event Detected ETA 09:11:11:06:12 Threat Level: UNKNOWN-UNKNOWN Primary Aggressor: UNKNOWN(UNKNOWN) ACK(Any Key) ... ] THE PRECEEDING MESSAGE HAD BEEN AUTOMATICALLY GENERATED AS A RESULT OF A FAILURE TO ACKNOWLEDGE AN EFSCD SYSTEM INTERRUPT, WHICH IT TRANSCRIBED."

He decides he'd better just page everyone. The whole family.


	4. The Talk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's Jade who finally breaks the silence (which Dave must have been waiting for).  
> "sorry."  
> Dave shifts slowly now, a contrast to his efficient manhandling before. He removes one doggy ear-form to give her a carefully affected sarcastic-sassy-annoyed huff in response. ("Ironic.") Jade sighs out a smile.  
> "i am though. for everything. i'm sorry, dave."  
> Dave is grimacing sincerely as he picks out the rest of her guards. She peeks open her eyes, relieving Dirk with a glimpse of healthy white.  
> "thank you, dave."  
> "no, jade." (Uh oh.)  
> "what?"  
> "no. you're not welcome. it's not ok. i'm done. i'm not doing this any more."

He sits at a large table with a recessed interior, in which sits a scale model of the proposed development for the SW Quadrant of New City. Over top of that sits a custom-made temporary structure, a simple cone of dimly translucent blue plastic. On top of the cone sits an industrial-strength sun-lamp.

He sits with his elbows on the table, his hands folded together over his mouth, fingers interlaced. He is bathed in pale blue light, as though from a computer monitor. It reflects off his eyeglasses, two sharp black shards which meet at the bridge of his nose. Almost no part of his face is visible, from any angle.

After a moment he leans in slightly, and runs a finger over the bottom of his glasses. Another 30 or 40 seconds later he gives a sharper-than-normal exhalation, but has no change in posture. It's impossible to tell what expression, if any, has crossed his face. Suddenly a finger jerks up, pressing into the side of one eyepiece. It holds there for a moment, then drops back to rest.

He continues watching. This time it's over a minute before his next visible activity, a hard swallow. This is followed, after a moment, by a general tiny ripple of motion, and the faintest rise of blush to his cheeks. It is the first sign that he's actually being affected by whatever it is he's watching.

Over the next several minutes the only discernible change is a very gradual deepening of that blush. It's made even easier to miss by the simultaneous slow change of the light coming out of the cone, from blue to green. He dips his head and moves his hands forward slightly. Then he snaps them both back into place, in time with the faintest *pop* from under the cone.

He continues watching. His skin takes on a slight glisten of perspiration, but nothing beads. He leans in further, unconsciously. Then something happens, invisible to any outside observer, and he immediately cedes the undeliberately taken ground. His eyebrows raise above the top of his shades.

"Dave."

His voice is a sudden explosion in the silence, but he is unruffled by the blast.

"Dave."

He only twitches the second time, as though he was temporarily deaf for the first. His blush deepens in a hurry, now, but then he just as quickly goes pale.

"She's still pumping it."

"Dave, hold her. I'm going to dive her."

He raises a finger to the bottom of his shades. Then he just sits there, and watches.

\---

It's Jade who finally breaks the silence (which Dave must have been waiting for).  
"sorry."  
Dave shifts slowly now, a contrast to his efficient manhandling before. He removes one doggy ear-form to give her a carefully affected sarcastic-sassy-annoyed huff in response. ("Ironic.") Jade sighs out a smile.  
"i am though. for everything. i'm sorry, dave."  
Dave is grimacing sincerely as he picks out the rest of her guards. She peeks open her eyes, relieving Dirk with a glimpse of healthy white.  
"thank you, dave."  
"no, jade." (Uh oh.)  
"what?"  
"no. you're not welcome. it's not ok. i'm done. i'm not doing this any more." (Well, no surprise there. What matters is her response...)   
"dave, i -"  
"shut up, jade."  
Jade shuts up. Dirk would have shut up, if he'd been speaking. The cold, soured pain in Daves voice now would shut up Roxy. (Would shut up Karkat, come to that... and isn't that an interestingly puzzle-piece shaped thought?)  
"i love you jade."  
"dave i -"  
"shut up. shut up and listen. i'm done. done like time travel. because this is just as bad. or worse. because this isn't for anything. if i were making a dead jade through time travel, there'd be some reason. even if it were dumb. if i make a dead jade through, this, it's for nothing."  
"not nothing" She sounds like she's sobbing, but there are no tears that Dirk can see. She's never gotten her eyes more than a sliver open.  
"then why, jade?" (He knows why, and he knows she can't say it, but he has to try, always.)  
She does a classic Jade head-shake-moan "i don't knoooooooow", but Dave is having none of it.  
"it doesn't matter. i'm not doing it any more. the end. sorry not sorry."  
She tries to lift her head to look at him (even though puppy-dog eyes don't seem to be in the cards for her - but that's probably unfairly harsh), but doesn't get far.  
"nope, stop. just stay still."  
"ugh, fine."  
The silence that follows that is ugly. For all her surface sweetness, Jade actually really doesn't like being told what to do. She can have a little trouble with "no". (Raised by god-dog, accustomed to limits being set by instant manual correction, the forbidden made truly unavailable behind the crackle-pop of a gentle displacement.) When faced with an interpersonal impasse, she turns inward and stews. Trying to think how she gets what she wants, despite them. (And occasionally she even does,) Getting frustrated. (but that's a constant.) It's Dave who has to break the tension.  
"i love you jade. i don't like hurting you, or seeing you hurt. i don't get anything out of it. out of this. i tolerate it because it's part of you and i want to love all of you, i do love all of you, but - "  
"god, you're so full of shit sometimes."  
"what?"  
"'done like time travel.' you're NOT done with time travel."  
"ok, you know - "  
"'don't get anything out of this', you're just too cowardly to admit it. you like being davey or you wouldn't do it. you like being the johns and the clients and the strangers, or you wouldn't. fucking. do it."  
"that's different." It's a hiss, but he's too taken aback by her sudden anger to put any real (venom) strength into it.  
"how? 'then why?'"  
"that's about, home." He winces as the last word falls out, with such unexpected weight. So unexpectedly begging for examination. (No, not that, not now.)  
"it's about everything that's gone. earth." He too-hastily qualifies.  
To that, Jade gives a very un-Jade laugh. (No, not un-Jade. Dark-Jade, which has never stopped being a thing that exists.) "Ha." A short cruel bark. "right, i guess this is the Jade Harley Crazy Show. the Dave Strider Crazy Show remains on indefinite hiatus." Her anger smoothes out. "well, say something, dummy."  
Dave takes a deep breath before he starts again. Deliberate, a mechanical necessity for what he has planned.  
"i don't want to hurt you, jade. maybe i do want to hurt someone, a little, in some vague and general way. maybe it's fun to pretend. but, not jade. it's not even fun to pretend, hurting jade. and we tried the role-play thing where you were 'jadiah' and i was 'davey' and that made it easier, made it possible, for me to give you what you wanted. but it's stopped working, because you don't really want to be jadiah. you never did, and so you've stopped trying. you do want to be jade, when you're being, when you're suffering. you DO want jade to suffer. everything else is secondary, or actually a distraction, a compromise. you want to hurt, jade, and i can't do it. i never could."  
She tries to sit up again, halfway through, but his hand on her chest stops her. So she just lays there, listens and processes. She's responding as soon as he's finished;  
"i have been trying. please believe me, dave. i've been trying and i'm sorry but it's so hard." Dirk marvels at this. There's never been a better role-player than Jade Harley, and that's probably hyperbole, but it's not just a new-universe joke. "because, you're wrong, not really but about one thing. i don't want you to hurt me, either. i don't want dave to hurt me. it's why it's been so hard, was so hard this last time. the babies, dave. and then the fucking stupid thing. god, you're stupid, you know that? you and dirk."  
Her eyes pop open wider, officially half-lidded. She starts giggling.  
"who is fucking here, isn't he? dirk! you idiot! you're an idiot! you're sooooooo stupid!"  
Her giggling doesn't stop. It is her final ritual, and it will only end when she's ready for it, everything, to be over.

Dirk remains kind of aggravated. She's so close, but she's not sealing the deal. And now she's talking to him directly, by name, which is just so ridiculously against any possible standard of decency for this kind of thing it should be illegal. He just wants the one thing. He's listening closely, and he knows what it sounds like. Instead she's making jokes, jokey childish insults, and giggling. And Dave, Dave couldn't be more content than to just lay there, holding her through the end.

It peters out, leaving a silence that Dirk perceives to be less 'awkward' than protected. Neither of them WANTS to break it. They both know awkward is what comes next.  
"so, what now?"  
It's so faint, it could be either of them. (It's Jade. Dirk is listening very closely.)  
"now we see about getting you seated?"  
She nods an affirmation. He moves efficiently once again, getting her up onto the couch, her legs curled beneath her, then joining her himself. They really are a picture together - they absolutely could have been strifing, rather than fucking. His ash has mostly fallen off, leaving him pink with a line of plainly-unhealthy purple-speckled-tyrian, right down the middle. Jades entire face is a near-perfect match, and bloated.  
"what do we do now?", she resumes, "if you're 'done like time travel', which i remind you you are not,"  
"'Why Is It That When The Subject Of Tempor-'"  
"yes, congratulations, you can take the piss out of your sister-in-law, behind her back, for something said once in half-jest decades ago. you are officially the king of comedy, please report to your nearest open-mic night for immediate coronation."  
"and you sound more like 'the queen of books' every day."  
"argh shut up. also only because of spending so much time with you, mr. strilonde."  
"hey now, the 'stri-' sta-"  
"but shut up. it's totally time travel. i Know."  
He hears the capitalization, and gives her an eyebrow quirk.  
"i kind of, um, peeked, when you were the bab-, the kids. are you actually in denial about this or what?"  
"'denial', mrs. lalonde?"  
"stop 'deferring', mr. lalonde. it is time travel. i Know because i looked with Powers. Powers, mr. lalonde. there's no secrets from my Powers."  
"jade seriously i know it's time travel, alright? technically. you really want to have a debate about *terminology*, right now?"  
"shit, no. sorry."

Now the lull is awkward. Dirk understands the use of levity to diffuse tension, and also the need to not force things. (He really, really does.) He can be patient. He's waited this long, what's a little longer? (Ok, the view was quite a bit nicer before.) He can just sit here, and watch, for as long as they need to take. All the time in the world.

"or should i say 'shit no.', heh..."

They can just take as long as they want.

"we have to talk about what happened. about The Mask. about how it's going in the recycler and we're trying very hard to forget it ever existed."  
"or, we could not do those things."  
"nah, gonna have to say we do."  
"dave i'm sorry. it was dumb, i'm sorry. but i didn't hurt myself, i really wouldn't ever ac-"  
"hold that thought"  
He flashsteps away and back, and now he's got a vanity mirror. (Cheap plastic, cracked at the top.) Dirk recognizes it as a prop from the flophouse. He holds it up to her, right in her face. She flinches at the sight, but the flinch turns into as close an approximation of resolve as she can muster.  
"ok, i fucked up. sorry. dave. fuck, i am sorry. i'm going to be a lot sorrier in an hour or so, right? fuck."  
Dave lowers the mirror, setting it on the couch between them.  
"sister, your shit is fucked."  
"aaaaaaaugh it's not fair. it's not fair, dave. i didn't mean to. i never mean to. but when i get in it it's..."  
"like going home?"  
It's a bold offer. He's letting her know it's ok for her to deflect, asking her to pry into him, instead, if she needs to. But she doesn't.  
"fuck no. fuck, if that were home-"  
She catches the look that flashes across his face, a look that never belongs on the face of a Strider. Self-doubt, shame. She bites that sentence off quick, swallows it whole.  
"i've never told you this before. because it doesn't make sense."  
He nods. She still hesitates, starts hugging herself, her exhalations turning longer and longer until they're just short of actual whines.  
"jade, it's ok. nothing about you ever made sense to begin with. it's why i fell for you in the first place."  
"ha. ha." It's wry, but it is a laugh.  
"it's like death. it's like being dead, dave, the total lack of sensation. and it doesn't make sense because we've all been dead, right? and it's not like that, so what i really mean to say, is, it is nothing. i put on the mask and jade can go away. jade can go away like she should..."  
The confession drains out of her, working itself down to nothing, the last sentence coming out a whisper which Dirk isn't sure Dave even could have heard, which might be a problem. It's something Dave absolutely needs to hear. (Why it's necesarry.) But then Dirk rethinks, he must have heard after all, or gotten the gist, because he shifts uncomfortably, and then leans in for a hug. Jade holds him back, shakes her head.  
"the pressure. the pressure is what matters here, i know."  
Dave opens his mouth for a generic rebuttal, a reassurance that everything matters, but she shushes him by reaching up to lay two fingers on her face, on the deep backhand bruise comingling with the single shallow universal one.  
"the pressure is... you're not going to get this. i don't really get this. it's a sprite thing, i think, and a bec thing. and... ha, i sometimes could swear it's fucked up doggy memories of being petted by an overzealous, affection-starved pre-teen orphan girl. like bec had his own kink, literal heavy petting."  
She tries out a big grin on him.  
"and, jade?"  
It doesn't work.  
"and, shit fuck, i don't know. there's something else. some other part of me, or bec, or The Game, that's in me now forever whether i want it or not, whether i ever wanted it or not. and it's something which responds to that pressure, in my face, all around my head. and the senselessness. my absence. all of it at once, and it's there, and it could do things. it Knows, what to do. and it likes being there while you're in me, maybe even more than i do. so, i let it."  
Dave is visibly alarmed. She looks past him, to the wall.  
"i don't know. i wasn't just joking about it being a bec thing, either. that really, sincerely may be it. he would go into the ground. i think he spent most of his time there, by the time of The Game. he'd come to me with rock in his fur, hot rock. freshly formed. i thought it at the time, too. 'he's chilling in the core. god, what *is* he...'"  
Dirk can tell she's tracking vines. Repressing, somewhat, the embarrassment of this confession. He knows she's got the ability and inclination. Enabling her dissociative tendencies is the primary reason he put them there. She's weeping again, but her voice stays steady long enough for her to finish;  
"god, dave, it's all so fucking dumb. i'm a punchline."  
He does hug her now, lets her sob into his bare shoulder. He draws back, but keeps hold of her hands.  
"well, we all the run the risk of inheriting our parents kinks, right? this bullshit always runs in the blood. at least you got a kick-ass consolation prize, with the Powers."  
She smiles. He's encouraged.  
"yeah, thanks for the teleportation, size-changing, selective omniscience, all that jazz. thanks, doggy-dad. oh what's that? i should try going where? sounds pretty hot and bothersome, actually. what, why are you winking, what's with all these nudges from your gross little dry scabby crenellated elbow-pads?"  
She groans out an "aaugh, staaaahp", but is giggling a little. He CAN'T stop, now.  
"and then you do go, and it's like, ok. you might go again. but then, the next family reunion, you're chowing down on some choice poop, he moseys over, you talk about the weather, sniff each others butts, make typical niceties. and then he asks you, 'so, found any diamonds in your hair, lately?' and you're just confused, 'wtf doggy-dad, is this some hippy thing?' but then he just winks, says 'try going in... *dirty*. whole different experience.'"  
She laughs and punches him. He laughs too.  
"hey, again with the laugh-punching! is she finally looking to strife?"  
Which just makes her hug him and laugh harder.

All this talk (and it's interesting talk no doubt), and they're still not anywhere closer to giving him what he needs. (But still so close!) He's feeling (dirty) toyed with, even though he knows (hopes?) they've mostly forgotten him. He doesn't (didn't) want to be here for this. He just wants confirmation. But they keep stopping, for jokes. Really bad jokes. Idiots.

"so."  
"mmm-hmmm?", from around his shoulder, where she hangs, totally loose, her head practically on his back.  
"recycler."  
She stiffens, then rises, curling up to a cat-like (trollish) knee-sit.  
"dave have you not heard a word i've said?"  
"yeah. i actually have. have you? do you even hear the body-snatcher shit coming out of your mouth?"  
"it's not like that!", she huffs, a little too note-perfect tsundere. (A perfect match for her pose.)  
He picks up the mirror, puts it in her hands.  
"look at yourself and say that."  
To her credit, she does look. She doesn't say anything.  
"jade?"  
"fuck, dave. you don't understand. it's really not like what you're thinking."  
"jade. you don't have a fucking clue what i'm thinking."  
Jade starts and stares at him, at his sudden coldness. Dirk (who hasn't forgotten his earlier rage) just wonders what took him so long.  
"you wanna know what i'm thinking? i'm thinking you were about five seconds away from completely losing control today. and maybe all you would have done would have been to blind yourself, pop your eyes like grapes, and we just could put a knife in you. either way you'd revive healthy and life would go on, ha ha ha oh what a nice silly little catastrophe, accidental death by bondage malfunction, just what you'd expect from sburbian gods, wonder it hasn't happened sooner."  
"it prob-" He takes hold of her arms, again, and gives a very tight squeeze which silences her.  
"but it would have been a moment in which you lost control, jade. again." He pauses to give her an opportunity to respond to that last word, to deny or just maybe acknowledge it. She gives no sign of having heard it at all. "i don't want to see that day, jade, because it's the day everything changes, between us. between you and everyone else. and i know, if we're really gonna live forever, and it certainly seems like we will, time won't stop just for us. i know it will happen, inevitably. that this wonderful time we're in right now, this is our honeymoon. not just us two, but all of us. i'm relieved this is something we can still manage, still steal a few more days out from under, and not the last, most extreme warning sign that jade is finally starting her rise. because of everyone, all our big fucked up family of sociopaths, psychopaths, geniuses and idiots, we all know deep down she's the #1 candidate."  
Dirk has never seen more of himself in Dave than at this moment. It's a distressingly neutral observation. Y'know what, nah. Dirk's just sitting there, watching, and if he can't be honest with himself in his own head he's already lost. This is plain distressing.  
Dave realizes he's gone too far, and is quick to try and turn it around with some levity, but  
"spider-bitch ain't got-"  
that is NOT the right thing to say to Jade. Ever.  
"DAVE STOP"  
They all jump, Dirk only with a twitch of his hands tighter together, but Jade actually yelps and Dave is halfway to his feet in a defensive posture. Jade actually recovers first.  
"dave, if you EVER-"  
"JADE STOP"  
She actually snaps her head upward as though to look for him, and even gets close, settling on somewhere near his ear. (Spooky.)  
"DIRK SHUT UP. FUCKHEAD IDIOT FAGGOT."  
She slaps her hands over her mouth (wincing), after the last. Dave stares at her in bald surprise, and Dirk can't tell if it is just surprise or if he isn't also falling for her again, right there. Either way, it's him who defuses the situation, with a laugh. She looks back, eyes fully 3/4 open, and joins him with her own nervous giggle, from behind her tight-pressed hands.  
He leans in, and purrs for her,  
"you think we'd need to start seeing other people?" (!)  
but then they're both fully buried in yet another laughing fit.

So close. So fucking close. He hates them both. Assholes.

"hehe, nah. i'd just put a black hole in her head." Perfectly casual. Dave sobers up in a hurry.  
"jade. this is what i'm talking about."  
She tries waving it off, swish-swishing her hand, rolling her head back. For a moment her puffy face is occluded, and the dress looks actually right on her. She looks nothing like Jade.  
"you can have that darkness, or the Powers, or anything less than absolute control. pick two."  
"dave. that isn't darkness. it would be Justice. any time i wanted. i Know. and i'm not the only one."  
The rage comes back, just for a moment.  
"jade that's exactly- fuck!"  
Then he changes it out, for a really good poker face.  
"y'know what, nah. we're dropping this. she's not stealing one more second."  
Jade doesn't miss a beat, instantly nods her affirmation.  
"yes, thanks... so, which am i?"  
"uh, refresh my memory?"  
"sociopath, psychopath, idiot or genius?"  
"oh, jade. you're all of them. that's what makes you special."  
"uh, thanks?"  
"'you're welcome'. but, nah, jade, seriously..."  
They had both been glancing around aimlessly, not wanting to stare, maybe trying to clear the cerulean from their minds. Now Dave looks directly into her eyes.  
"thank you."  
She stares back, agape.  
"dave... ha. hahahaha."  
Then they're both laughing again.

They're both fucking laughing, again. Oh, and now they're kissing, and if this turns into a second round he really is going to have to hit record and peruse it later. He needs to leave time for his own relief, before Dave Management starts.

She pulls away.  
"is there water up here?"  
"huh, yeah. shit, sorry."  
"nah, it's ok, i didn't realize either, until i was feeling myself stick to you."  
He could go to the minifridge under the desk (Every room in the dungeon has one, and a first aid kit, and after tonight Dirk's going to be sprinkling redundant access points, as well - if there is an 'after tonight'. They need to fucking GET A MOVE ON AND LET HIM KNOW.), but instead he just pulls a bottle from his sylladex. Dirk can't tell if it's cold or not, but Jade clearly doesn't care either way.  
"take it easy."  
"mmmh."  
Her brow narrows and she stares hard as she finishes the whole bottle in one go. He quirks his in turn. Her stomach gurgles loudly.  
"hey, just don't puke on me."  
"aaaaaaaaaah!" She pulls the drained bottle away with a flourish.  
"... nice. do i even have to say it?"  
"you're wrong."  
"gonna have to be more specific. ain't never been -"  
"i'm not special for being all four. we all are."  
He just smiles, a genuine smile like he'll give no one else. Dirk doesn't want to (want to) see it. He doesn't want to (need to) be here for this.  
"'uh, thanks?'."  
"and you're wrong about the other thing. but i give."  
She actually folds her dog-ears down.  
"you can take The Mask."  
"well no shit, jade. it was never a question, -"  
"'- and it's not an answer.'"  
"i see your graduates courses have served you well, mrs. lalonde."  
"no, shut up. that joke is over. you call me 'mrs.', again, it's 'Strider'... unless you want to be Mr. Harley."  
"shit, i could dig it. us strilondes have backup namesakes, anyway. c'mere, hubby."  
She rolls backwards into his waiting arms, and he gives an exaggerated "oof".  
"wait, are you serious? i don't really care."  
"nah, neither do i. we're both just being avoidant."  
"oh, right."

OH, RIGHT.

He leans down into the crook of her neck, laying little kisses. She flinches away from where his face brushes hers.  
"what are we gonna do with you, harley?"  
Her response comes out as small as she looks, there, wrapped in him.  
"i don't know. i don't know anything, dave. i haven't for a long, long time."  
She's closed her eyes, dozing? He follows suit, using her shoulder as his pillow.  
"i guess we don't really need an answer right now."

FUCK. Dirk is about ready to wash his hands of this, is in fact setting his shades up to record for him and opening pesterchum to ring up Equius, when Jade vomits. Just a 'blurgh' and slightly-yellow liquid running down all over her front, from between otherwise closed lips. She doesn't even open her eyes.

"jade? did you just?"  
"sorry. i'm sorry. really sorry."  
"yeah, got that."  
"heh. hehehehehe."  
"jade, fuck, hahaha."

They just sit there, half covered in her sick, not even bothering to open their eyes. They just sit there, and laugh. They fucking deserve each other.

Dave does eventually give an unconscious jerk backwards, once the smell crosses some critical threshhold Dirk can only guess at, and rolls it smoothly into an efficient clean-up operation. He has her in a fresh pair of sweats (the sullied 3AM vanishes into his sylladex) and suckling a bottle of 'SPORTSdrank', this time, (which this time she does take slowly) before she can think (or wake up enough?) to be more than sheepishly compliant about it all. He returns her to her own side of the couch, and she pulls her legs up into a curl as she sits watching him run a cleansing rod over his arms.

"jade, when's the last time you ate?"  
"oh, that's nothing."  
"yeah, i noticed."  
"no, i mean, i fasted before. because i thought you were teasing anal."  
"oh. must have been wishful thinking?" He has his brow do a jig.  
"yeah, maybe."  
"oh."

They're both finally too tired for jokes? That might be a good thing. This might be it.

"these clothes are ugly."  
"they're yours."  
"oh, ha."

Dave slips into his own sweats and re-joins her on the sofa, maintaining the gap between them.

"jade we really may as well do this."  
"i knoooooow... but."  
"but?"  
She shakes her head vigorously, the motion carrying down her arms and sloshing her SPORTSdrank.  
"just, you win, take it. it wasn't working anyway."  
He takes her literally, plucking the bottle from her hand and re-capping it before she spills, wedging it down between the cushions.  
"what? what wasn't working."  
"fuck, ignore that."  
"jade, come on."  
"can't. fucking. bullshit."  
Growls. Daves eyes widen in comprehension, then he nods.  
"if you want to tell it, just tell it."  
Her eyes flash, two solid-green crescents.  
"If you can't get one third from from two zero, you might be using the wrong operation."  
She closes them.  
"FUCK. sorry."  
"jade, stop apologizing."  
"yeah. it's to myself, really. i feel so silly."  
"i know. it's ok. i've gotta ask, though?"  
"no idea." She shakes her head again, but softly this time. Sadly.  
"ok."  
She re-opens her eyes, showing her desperation.  
"but i really thought you would. that's why." Dirk can tell she's struggling again, withholding something, but Dave doesn't notice.  
"yeah no. never was a riddle guy. i think i got, like, one, during."  
He leans in, puts a hand on her knee, in front of her face.  
"enough bullshit now. i'm not doing this any more. any of it. and we have to deal with that. it doesn't need to be now, but it really may as well be."  
"... yeah."  
"so?"  
Desperation notches down to anger.  
"dave, I DON'T KNOW. i haven't been bullshitting, or avoiding, i've been telling you and telling you and you're not hearing me. i don't knooooooooooow."  
It falls from anger back to desperation, as it spills from her, and ends with a near-howl she forces off.  
"- i need you to tell me." It's almost surprise, and definitely a plea, Dirk can't blame Dave for misinterpreting.  
He jumps back, hands on his head.  
"jade no! fuck! that's the whole point!"  
"no! not like that!" she drops to an embarrassed whisper (modesty returning with normal clothes?) "come on, that's never really been my thing, anyway." her voice returns to its full strength "i just mean, this is you. you're the one who's calling it off. you first."  
He drags his hands down over his face, leaving behind his shades.  
"cooool trick. now do it again in reverse."  
He ignores her. The shades are there to help him ignore things.  
"we were trying to end it tonight. dirk had this whole thing planned out."  
"the stupid thing."  
"hm?"  
"that's what i was calling it, while i waited for it to happen, after seeing it coming a mile away. dirk's an idiot." She remembers, again, that he's probably still there, turns up to give him another eery near-hit glare. This one is even closer, right at his temple. "dirk you're an idiot."  
"c'mon, jade, play nice. don't speak directly to him. he's already probably nearly pissing his pants from being forced to observe the expression of human emotion. don't forget how small we are right now. make him break his force-of-nature schtick and we might wind up wet. i don't want to die drowning in anyones piss, no matter how temporary."  
This, of course, produces another giggle-fit from Jade, but the restored Dave Strider just waits her out, this time, instead of joining in.  
"'the stupid thing'. why was it stupid, again?"  
"because i don't want that! that's the last thing i want! it's just... stupid! in so many ways. all the ways. i don't want you to hurt me." She keeps dipping into that whisper, as she nears direct ownership of her masochism. "you can't, that way."   
"yeah, i think that was the whole idea? i don't really know. it was a dirk thing."  
"no, it was a rose thing. a stupid thing."  
"'grats, you can make fun of your sister-in-law behind her back'"  
"for something she's still doing. and now dirk's doing. don't forget that part."  
"jade, sometimes a narcissistic space-pervs gotta do what a narcissistic space-pervs gotta do, and we poor lowly humans just need to try to find the grace to accept that truth."  
"which one are we talking about, again?"  
"that's a really good question."  
"right? that's what i was saying."  
"anyway!" a long syllable topped with a point, a spear to stab the digression dead "the real truth is, someone has to do it."  
"'it's just us.', i know."  
He lowers his shades, to give her a sharp glare. The shades are there to be meaningfully removed.  
"no, you don't. you never really have. you've demonstrated it so perfectly just minutes ago. that's what i'm really talking about, behind all of this."  
He raises them back up.  
"but we're not talking about her. and so we can't really talk about that. and so it will continue to wait in the background of our lives, and i can only continue to hope each new day isn't the day."  
Dirk has tracked the rise of the sorrow in his voice by wavelength. Jade has done the same, with magical dog-ears. She's shamed into silence.  
"jade, if i can't hurt you right..."  
She goes to cover her face, jerks back at the contact, then presses on by force of will.  
"no."  
"and i'm refusing to any longer hurt you wrong, as substitute..."  
"stop talking like that..."  
He groans, now, lays his hands on her wrists like he's going to pull her hands away, but then either thinks better or decides he doesn't have the heart for it.  
"jade look down."  
She looks down, where the crotch of her pants has taken on the unmistakable sheen of a cum-stain.  
"augh goddamnit!"

She has them off in a wink, wobbly to her feet and running them over to the desk,  
"gimme another water bottle"  
before she thinks better and just captchalogs them.  
"i thought they were ugly?"  
"yeah, until i recognized them! they're real, dave. from kanaya."  
She stands before him, bottomless, her hands on her hips and her legs spread in an expression of aggravation. It's only marginally less lewd a 'display' posture than her earlier game-winning move, and his seed dripping out of her more than makes up the difference.  
He holds up the mirror. It's a small picture, from her perspective, but she does see it all, and the point is made.

"jade, you have to get with me on this. we have to talk. which means at some point we have to use words."   
He decaptchalogs and tosses her a box of tissues, and then a second pair of pants. Dirk marvels at this level of preparedness, wanting to feel proud but chilled by his realization that it's all driven by (irrational! absolutely!) fear. Fear in no way tempered by trust in Dirk, as the DM.  
She carefully wipes herself out, has an involuntary jerk at one point, but no real sign of arousal. Dirk is relieved.

Then she sits down with silent grace, not actually folding her legs (no one has forgotten the import of that, on that couch) but keeping them primly together, her back straight, her shoulders squared. She turns to Dave and gives a weary smile, which takes on a grim character under her incongruously bright eyes.  
"fine. let's rap; i have a problem. with my pretty severe case of emotional masochism. i'm a bigtime badfeel painslut and it's getting out of hand."

Dirk starts recording immediately. Dave just stops, perfectly still. He sees it, too. He's trying to make up his mind, if Dirk is right, making possibly the most important decision ever made, in this universe. Dirk couldn't. Dirk can barely bear watching.

"so, the question is still, what are we going to do about it? and, i still need you to lead me on this!"  
Dave makes his decision. He gives her a small nod, gets an unthinkingly mirrored marginal dip in return.  
"sooooooo? come on, dave."  
His mouth pulls suddenly into a deep grimace of naked terror. (Making a hard choice is one thing, actually putting it into practice is another.) Even through the shades, it's clear he's on the verge of tears, or doing an uncanny impression. Jade reacts in slow-motion, shifting from blankness into sympathy through several distinct facial adjustments.  
"your masochism isn't your only problem. i don't even give a fuck about that, compared to this shit."  
"what?"  
He turns from her, reaches down behind him, and picks up her clutch. He holds it in his lap and stares down at it. He reaches up to his shades, but hesitates, then decides to leave them. Dave Strider is hesitating.  
"jade. you gotta believe me this wasn't planned. this whole day, this whole game, 'production', dirk would say. it wasn't all about this. i wouldn't do that to you."  
"dave, stop. i don't know what you're talking about now but we need to stay focused here! the time for avoidance is over!"  
"jade, you're so right. thank you."  
He snaps open her clutch, retrieves her compact. He puts it in her hand. He puts back on his own mask, his Stridancy.  
"jade, i want you to take your make-up off."  
"haha, dave, what?" Her make-up is long gone, under The Mask, dissolved and smeared to a uniform nothing.  
"i saw, thought i saw and i guess now i was right, god jade i have to be, i saw something in the shower, just before you wanted to quit. and i took some time out to think over it and then i ran with it. i talked to dirk about it and he agreed there was a chance, only that must have been a stable loop, fuuuck jade i'm doing time travel again for this. jade i've never been so scared."  
It's clearly true. He actually has to shake his head, clearing the distraction.  
"and then you responded. jade you did it. you've already done it. you can."  
"dave i don't know what you're talking about?" It's perfectly light. She's watching Dave Strider completely lose his shit and she's nonplussed.  
"jade you do know. jade i'm sorry. jade please. jade, jade, jade. listen to me say it. jade. you can do it. i'd honestly never thought you could, but you did, as soon as i tried for you jade you're so strong, and i'm so sorry i didn't believe in you i was so weak and you deserved better. you're the best of us and you can. you can, jade. jade."  
He's rambling, talking compulsively, because if he stops everything will stop. Jade's expression is falling slowly, through a series of small adjustments, into pity. He's talking nonsense to her, he's having a breakdown and she pities him for it.  
"jade, please. humor me. we've - please. we've been talking around this all day. we've been talking around this our whole lives. please. take it off. please stop."  
"dave i."  
"there's nowhere left to run. nowhere but back. please. you can."  
He sobs out the last, a desperate rush of hurt;  
"please jade you know exactly what's happening here, you know exactly what i'm talking about. i don't know exactly what happened tonight but i know, i can tell. you did it then, you can do it now. you can face it. you can choose to be here."

She sits there, and watches his tears fall. She just sits there, and watches Dave Strider cry. She just sits there.

\---

All the Prospitian humans ('kids', he still wants to say, and in their case it will probably never not be fitting) have it in them, a beast waiting to strike. Jade has long-ago tamed hers, absolutely mastered it, probably before she ever met any of them. Probably while sliding a knife through loose, wrinkly flesh. Yes, Dirk knows her history, almost intimately. They actually have a lot in common. (Not, that, not exactly, but still a lot. More than he'll ever let anyone else realize.)

Dirk wonders about Jade - a lot. He wonders, he knows, more than anyone else considers appropriate, in both depth and frequency. (They think he doesn't like her... oh the dear idiots.) But he knows what they won't admit, that they do all sometimes wonder, even Dave. They can't not wonder, after what they've all seen her capable of. If it wouldn't be more correct to call her, 'Jade'. If she is ever, really, there. She puts it on and takes it off so effortlessly, so subtly - and with what capacity for degree? (At his darkest and most unguarded, Dirk wonders if she's not the only right one of them all. Aren't they SUPPOSED to be Gods?)

'Is she ever really there?' Then, of course, she'll go and do something so painfully genuine (so painfully Harley, Egbert, English, Crocker) it just makes them feel silly for it, ashamed for it, striving to forget all about it. But the doubt does inevitably return. It's what makes her so damn scary. (That and, in combination with, her Powers.) At least with the genuine article, the Serkets or Peixes, they know where they stand. (And they can't make black-holes with their minds.) Jade (and John, to a far lesser degree) is too often a question. Jane is the most minorly affected, practically just one of the Dersites (he can't honestly say 'normal', or 'healthy', now can he?), and Jake is unmistakable, when he slips under - that pure white-hot HOPE leaves little doubt.

For Jade it's like changing her clothes (or putting on make-up, it would seem) - she could continue this entire conversation in this state, and then slip back in, and most people would probably never notice. Of course Dave did, now, even though he's often not the best at it. (Too close, too adoring. He'd love her even if she really wasn't. He'd make the jump to disciple, or prophet, in the worst case, without question.) This hard change is as close as she can get to telling him outright, to actually talking about it. It's her honesty.

In hindsight he's amazed this sharp turn is the first sign of it he's noticed since back in the production, with the makeup thing. (In-character dissociation! He'd recognized it only as a novelty at the time, and is genuinely humbled now, to understand it as the opportunity Dave recognized immediately.) Especially since, Dave is right, they've been dancing around the issue closer than Dirk thinks has ever been got. They've been dancing right up to the edge. What's really amazing, what's really threatening to give the two boys this dangerous HOPE, is that in many ways it's been Jade leading. There have been plenty of attempts at interventions, 'treatment' (it was practically all they were about, any of them, during the first few years, after what happened), and they were all spectacular failures, in the face of her stubborn denial. Any sign of acknowledgment, from her, is unprecedented.

Maybe she has been, depersonalizing, stepping out, and he's just missed it. Maybe it's just that he wasn't looking (had been in the 'shamed forgetfulness' part of the cycle, after realizing his mistake in manipulating her motherhood impulse). Or maybe, she's really been trying. (He's stopped, at Daves insistence, from trying to figure how much her sudden spikes of cold anger, her "darkness", he calls it, is tied to her dissociation. "no, that's all jade. that's jade at her most." Dirk defers to his judgement, as he does on most things about her.)

Dirk is terrified that Dave is making the biggest mistake in the history of the universe. Trying to talk to Jade about her dissociation is the one sure way to trigger it (but it was already triggered, under, strangely benign stress...). And despite what Dave says, Jade, of course, always has more places to run - she has displaced away from this before (but hasn't yet, and she should have by now if she were going to, for sure when he actually said that...). And, Dirk feels ashamed of it, he doesn't share Daves confidence that she, in fact, 'can'. That's the critical question, and they'd previously pretty much come to acceptance (as in, the stage of grieving) that she simply couldn't (but, if she really can...).

Dirk missed whatever it was Dave thinks he saw, the first time, and looking back now... he's not sure. He thinks he knows what Dave's thinking of, when she seemed to 'step out', but didn't DO anything with it, instead just sat there on the floor, thinking? (And what kind of sense does that make, 'dissociating to think'?) And then the makeup thing. Was that really, as Dave said, actually part of a dialogue?

(Dialogues. He hasn't had the conversation Dave referred to, yet. Fuck. Time travel. None of the Time Players ever want to talk about how it works now, outside of the game, the main loop. Dirks impression is, that it's possibly something even worse than 'doomed' and 'alpha' timelines, now. Or, at least something less comprehensible. Either is terrifying.)

He really has no choice but to defer to Daves judgment - they're well past the point of no return. He can't do anything, at this point. He can't even plan. All he can do now is bear witness.

\---

She's stopped responding, but she hasn't left (at least, any further), in either sense. She hasn't displaced, and she hasn't gone catatonic, which Dirk was never expecting anyway, but is supposedly a possibility here. She's just sitting there, watching Dave Strider cry. Her expression has fallen from polite compassion to a totally flat and neutral stone-face. That expression, on her bruised and swollen flesh, under her half-lidded eyes, makes her look like punch-drunk prizefighter trying to come back around from a KO. Dirk still can't bring himself to hope it, though.

Then her hands rise up in front of her face, a near-perfect front guard, and Dirk has his own moment of fugue in which he's convinced he's dreaming. Until he hears the click, and realizes what she's doing is holding the compact up. She stares at herself there, a not exactly pleasant picture. She drops one hand down, palm open, asking for something?

Dave gives her the clutch. She summons and retrieves from it what she needs, without breaking her self-stare. Medicated cleansing wipes. She starts, dragging them slowly and lightly, and very deliberately, over what must be very tender territory. She doesn't ever wince, not even when going over the worst deepness of the back-hand bruise. Dirk doesn't know whether that should impress or concern.

She is as methodical as she must be, considering there is no actual make-up to be removed, any more. She's just going through the motions, small, dexterous hand manipulations. She actually does come out looking a bit better, as the vitagel-rich wipes battle the swelling. Tears well in her eyes, but do not fall, and she saves that area for last, wiping them away for good.

"ok. there you are, mr. strider."  
He's staring hard, not looking into but examining her eyes, her too-tired-for-expression face.  
"dave you have to lead here, i, i can't. i can't oh god" she's suddenly panicking, but only gets the first sharp intake of hyperventilation before he's embracing her.  
"shhh, princess. you're fine, you're here with me and you're fine."  
"and the space-perv."  
"yeah, you're in the care of both striders, jade. there's never been a safer loopy broad, in all of history."  
She chokes at that, 'loopy'?  
"no. first off, dumb new-universe joke. don't be dirk. please don't be anyone but dave. second, She was safer. after."  
"jade you don't have to -"  
"no, i don't. you're right. so i'm not going to. i'm not. imnotimno-"  
"jade stop."  
"ok."  
Her manic terror falls back to blankness. Dirk doesn't like how wildly she's swinging, here.  
"jade, thank you."  
"FOR NOTHING!"  
The screech is right in his ear and apparently unexpected to both, as they both flinch.  
"dave don't. i can't. ok please no i can't i-" she catches herself "thank you thanks."

He pulls back from her to look her in the face, but keeps hold of her by the elbows, support.  
"ok, jade. just, whatever you need."  
She looks down, unable to meet his look, and whispers: "i need to go. dave this isn't right."  
He hugs her again, hard enough she has to tell him  
"stop you're hurting me."  
He loosens his grip, laughing tentatively,  
"gonna need the safeword, for that!"  
and she joins him, her laughter reedy, exasperating. Jade, laughing in agony. Daves victory. Dirk wouldn't be Dave, right then, for anything.

They laugh together. Idiots. Two perfect assholes, can't even manage to hold a simple conversation, and get to a simple resolution, a simple answer, without constant diversions into dumb jokes and totally undeserved laughing-fits. To major life-changing psychological breakthroughs. His Assholes. He wouldn't have them any other way, and he'll fight to make sure he never does.

She pulls back, as the laughter peters out, leaning back against the arm of the sofa, not quite prone, stretching her legs out to cross his, where they both hang over the edge. Not quite in his lap, yet. Dave stays upright, attentive.  
"jade lets talk about the sex things?"  
She stiffens, despite his careful words, but then nods.  
"i'm done."  
"ok."  
"but, i'm starting to see what dirk's always said, that maybe this is something good for you. maybe."  
"i, i don't know, actually."  
"oh?"  
"i still want it."  
"then what's the problem?"  
"i still want all of it. i still want The Mask, too. even more than anything else."  
"ah, gotcha. well then let's call it a compromise?"  
"ok."  
She's so blank, so passive. It's not her normal attitude, when depersonalizing, but Dave and Dirk are still having the same doubt. Daves eyes narrow.  
"jade, are you here?"  
It's a very bold directness.  
"what? where else would i be?" She swish-swishes, again, but now it's just goofy. Just Harley. "i'm just tired."  
He smiles in cautious, uncertain relief. Again, Dirk empathizes exactly. This doesn't feel quite right, but it's probably not a wise idea to push too hard, right now, either. Take the miracle breakthroughs one at a time, when dealing with reality-breaking forces.  
"ok. so it's not necessarily a bad thing, for you, maybe even a good thing. but, jade, i'm still done. i'm not doing any of it anymore. do you understand?"  
She sits back up, on her elbows, gives him one of his own eyebrow-quirks.  
"uh, no? or maybe it's you who doesn't. how are you saying..." She understands.  
"NO! NO, DAVE." She jerks up to shoot a glare at Dirk, this time missing by over a foot above him. "NO, PERVERT!" She snaps back to Dave, now complete with a pointed, shaking finger. "YOU! PERVERT! YOU! you..."  
Now for sure she's stopping, checking out. She's actually curling into herself, going truly fetal, about to slide off the couch to the floor, before Dave catches her at the last moment. Her every hair is standing on end.  
He shakes her, too afraid to be anything but angry.  
"jade stop it. jade! goddamnit you stop it now, you stupid little -"

Dirk won't permit this shit.   
"DAVE STOP. JADE, STOP."  
Dave stops. He drops her, now in a more stable position on the couch. Jade stays stopped. Dave is stopping himself, going dead still, staring.  
Dirk will fight this.  
"JADE, HE'S NOT LEAVING YOU." He doesn't know what he's saying until it's ringing in his ears. He won't know if it was the right thing until she responds. If she responds.

She responds. She shudders as she returns to life.  
"no, dave. i can't. not that. that's not what it is. that's not..."  
Dave reaches out to touch her, pat her face, pap her, and   
*CRACK*  
"motherfucker!"  
The smooth green arc is actually visible to their naked eyes, where it crosses at least eight inches between her brow and his middle finger. It's only there an instant, but looking at their face there can be no doubt they both did see it. And even Jade understood its import.  
She's flushed, embarrassed.  
"well, ok, maybe."

THERE. FINALLY. Consideration. And Dirk knows once she's permitted herself to consider it, it's already decided. It's such a stupidly obvious thing, of course they both had to fight it tooth and nail, every inch of the way he dragged them to it. Dirk sets the shades recording and then drops them as he stands, feeling no relief. (The pang of doubt, the urge to remain and make sure they're fine, is quickly buried. That's not his business, and he has his own to attend to. Now.) For that, he decaptchas a second set, and sends Equius a message. He stalks out of the room.

(and then they fucked)

\---

He just sits there, and watches. His elbows stay on the table, his hands conjoined under his nose, in front of his face. His shades still block his eyes.

His brows knit slightly, while staying almost level. A half-minute later there is a slight shift in his nose and hands, his mouth opening slightly.

His brows remain knit. They tilt up slightly, the opposite of anger, but quickly return to level. He keeps still, and keeps watching.

They briefly raise together, still tight together, still level, but higher. Then after another minute or so they narrow together as they drop fully out of sight, and remain there for a full second or two.

When they return they're back to knitted, and still mostly level, but if they're leaning any way now it's up.

They perk up in a hurry, right before he's speaking;  
"Dave, stop."  
His hands twitch tighter together.  
"Jade, stop."  
Something he's seen or heard makes his brows fall down to full concealment, again, at the same time he gives an unconscious turn slightly to the side.

They come back end-first, steeply pointed down, knitted more furiously than ever. Behind his hands he MUST be sneering.

Another few minutes pass before he actually sighs, or maybe it's a grunt, a short sharp shallow exhalation which may even be language, somewhere deep down. He lifts one finger to adjust some control on his shades, then stops suddenly. His visible face breaks into a perfect mirror image of itself, brows bowing up and apart, cheeks dropping.

His finger drops back down. His face appears to stay within some close range of that expression of total (surprise? pity? confusion? sadness?) for a very long time, while he sits and watches, the only change being a very gradual reuniting of his brow, into a knot nearly as strong as he'd worn before. Whatever it is he's seeing, now, he really doesn't want to be. But he is, and he's making sure to watch closer than ever. He does nothing else.

Several minutes later and it's over, suddenly. His hands swing apart, revealing a chagrined smile any troll would know instinctively. A smile for the sake of others, who the bearer doesn't even necessarily like. The smile of someone watching everything (which is to say, everybody) go (more or less) according to their plan. He takes the shades off and sets them on the table, revealing eyes that shine, with joy and anger and lust. He stands up, turns, and walks out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The (Not) End
> 
> The alternate (next chapter) is actually a much better ending, IMO, which is why it had to become an alternate - it's climactic in a way which doesn't leave as much room for the Jadiah/Everyone series I'd originally had in mind.


	5. Meanwhile, In A Parallel uuniverse... JAM!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She's stopped responding, but she hasn't left (at least, any further), in either sense. She hasn't displaced, and she hasn't gone catatonic, which Dirk was never expecting anyway, but is supposedly a possibility here. She's just sitting there, watching Dave Strider cry. Her expression has fallen from polite compassion to a totally flat and neutral stone-face. That expression, on her bruised and swollen flesh, under her half-lidded eyes, makes her look like punch-drunk prizefighter trying to come back around from a KO. Dirk still can't bring himself to hope it, though.
> 
> Then her fist darts out, and Dirk has his own moment of fugue in which he's convinced he's dreaming. Until he hears the crunch, appropriately hollowed by it's relay through his shades. Dave's in no condition to dodge, probably didn't even see it coming. He falls forward, holding her back with one hand and the halves of his shades together with the other. The shades are there to be broken?
> 
> "FU- okay. okay, good. jade?" He's looking hard, now. Searching her eyes for, her.  
> Environmental stimulus to unconscious reaction to conscious moderation to conscious response. Now let's see Jade do it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Blood and gore ahead.
> 
> I'll put in proper pesterlog formatting eventually.

"jade, please. humor me. we've - please. we've been talking around this all day. we've been talking around this our whole lives. please. take it off. please stop."  
"dave i."  
"there's nowhere left to run. nowhere but back. please. you can."  
He sobs out the last, a desperate rush of hurt;  
"please jade you know exactly what's happening here, you know exactly what i'm talking about. i don't know exactly what happened tonight but i know, i can tell. you did it then, you can do it now. you can face it. you can choose to be here."

She sits there, and watches his tears fall. She just sits there, and watches Dave Strider cry. She just sits there.

She's stopped responding, but she hasn't left (at least, any further), in either sense. She hasn't displaced, and she hasn't gone catatonic, which Dirk was never expecting anyway, but is supposedly a possibility here. She's just sitting there, watching Dave Strider cry. Her expression has fallen from polite compassion to a totally flat and neutral stone-face. That expression, on her bruised and swollen flesh, under her half-lidded eyes, makes her look like punch-drunk prizefighter trying to come back around from a KO. Dirk still can't bring himself to hope it, though.

Then her fist darts out, and Dirk has his own moment of fugue in which he's convinced he's dreaming. Until he hears the crunch, appropriately hollowed by it's relay through his shades. Dave's in no condition to dodge, probably didn't even see it coming. He falls forward, holding her back with one hand and the halves of his shades together with the other. The shades are there to be broken?

"FU- okay. okay, good. jade?" He's looking hard, now. Searching her eyes for, her.  
Environmental stimulus to unconscious reaction to conscious moderation to conscious response. Now let's see Jade do it.

She punches him again, still aiming dead center but now hitting the back of his hand. Her expression doesn't change. So much for not catatonic. She's just sleep-strifing. Dirk doesn't know if it's to Daves credit or his shame that he waits for the third punch before taking her in hand, plucking her fist out of the air and to the cushion before it can connect. One half of his shades falls right off, the other dangles from his ear for a moment before he shakes it off. Dirk can see now that, no, she didn't break his nose.

"jade say something. you're probably really freaking dirk out right now. let's not get drowned."  
Her eyes go marginally wider, and she starts rocking, half-inch torso-jerks, against the anchor of her arms in his hands.  
"get away from me"  
It's barely a whisper, and barely human, an all-throat dog-voice. It is most definitely a voice of distress. Victory. Dirk feels like he's about to vomit a blizzard. He can't imagine being Dave right now.  
"jade?" He probably couldn't discern the words, just heard a growl.  
She tries to stand up off the couch, but he holds her hands fixed like they were nailed down. She does make it, but has to twist strangely, winds up standing over him, leaning sharply right into his face.  
"let me go. let me go or i'll just teleport." A statement of fact. (Has she gone back under?)  
He shakes his head.  
"no. sit back down. we have to talk."  
"dave let me go or i will teleport you to the moon."  
He smiles.  
"no."  
"i will teleport you to the moon and i will leave your balls here."  
He laughs, tears still sparkling in his eyes;  
"jade if you want my balls all you have to do is ask. they're yours."  
"fuck you dave."  
She displaces him, the vacuum silence behind the staticky fizz-pop and the images (stars, green regalith, the planet from space) flashing through the lingering Dave-shaped hole testifying that she has stuck to her word - hopefully just with regard to the destination. Dirk doesn't see any errant testicles rolling around.  
He steps back into his own place, simultaneously. He never loses hold of her. He's in his god-pajamas, now, but he's still burnt, so it must not have been through a revival. He's also got on a new pair of shades - he actually sits on the old ones, which do manage to slip down the depression momentarily left by his disappearing/reappearing ass.  
"jade, come on."  
"LET GO OF ME!"  
Her sudden panic surprises him, and he does. She stumbles back. She stands there, half-crouched still but now into an unmistakably defensive posture, rather than the borderline-aggressive lean of before. Dirk has a belated realization that she isn't just distressed, she is absolutely terrified.

"what did you do to me?"  
Daves smile flickers back to rage, but settles on a controlled flat neutrality.  
"no. jade, no. don't do that. do anything else, but not that."  
Her cold anger flashes back, through the panic, and she opens her mouth to say something, but just exhales instead. A motionless exasperation.  
"we don't have to talk about it now. this is more than enough, for today, for this week or month or decade. just you deciding to be here. thank you."  
"i was always here."  
"jade, please just come sit down."  
She's unsure. She wavers there, leaning into a step forward and then back again. She bites her lip.  
"fucksake, jade."  
He reaches down his pants, pulls out his junk. He holds his flaccid dick back under his shirt to present her only his pale nutsack, a sharply defined white-gold blemish on the red of his pajamas.  
"what."  
"come take them."  
"you."  
"yes, jade?"  
"you're so dumb."  
"yes, jade." He pats the cushion. "come sit."  
She goes and sits. He leaves his balls out. Her eyes stay fixed there, on his crotch. She briefly lays her hand over them, lingering just long enough to not be a stroke. Then tells him  
"ok enough."  
"yeah it was getting uncomfortable."  
and he pulls the elastic waistband out, letting them drop back away.

"i'm tired, i want to go to sleeep. can we just go to sleep?"  
She crumbles as she says it, falling backwards and stretching out. The loveseat is too small for anyone to sleep very comfortably, and she's already pushed Dave back against the arm. She doesn't put her legs up on his lap, yet, but they're not far from, regardless.   
"you're a bigtime badfeel painslut and it's getting out of hand."

She sits up like she's been bit (complete with the expression of blind shock) and has her arm out like a shot, her open hand aimed to cross his cheek in a blow that would be devastating to both of them if he didn't intercept it. He holds it in place a few inches from his face, still fixed into a rigid spade. (Dirk can confirm, examining its relationship to the sharp lines of his face, that she really would have surely broken probably all four fingers, right at the knuckle, and given him a wide split to match.)  
It was clearly an unconscious reaction, but she still desperately tries to spin it.  
"you don't get to talk to me like that when you're not davey."  
"jade they're your words."  
She knows. She can't admit it, but she does know. She looks past him. At the wallpaper, fuck. That idiot-genius dissociation-bait wallpaper he was so proud of.

Dave doesn't have a clue. Dirk feels strongly that he must intervene here, get them out of that room. (Which is already a fucking historical monument at this point, anyway, maybe literally. They're well overdue for a change of scenery, he probably should have ushered them out before he let them get talking. The question then was where, but now anywhere else will do, and the question is how...) For methods of direct interaction with the scene he's down to Jades stealthcompubands, and he doesn't want to jar her at all right now. There's a prop intercom over the main doors back, but if she fried the desktop there's no doubt that's gone, too (and he doesn't even know if it was networked in the first place).

Dave, still holding her hand, which has thankfully now gone slack, gives a strange wiggle.  
"jade can i let you go without you hitting me?"  
"yes, fine."  
He releases her and she withdraws her arm slowly, folding it over her stomach as she lies back into a resting position. Dave reaches under himself and retrieves his broken shades, tossing them down behind him to rejoin the rest of the cast-offs.

Dirk would face-palm if he weren't busy scanning the wireless device registry. Sure enough, his new set are COM devices.

TT: Dave get her out of that room.  
TG: fuck what took you so long  
TT: Stupidity.  
TG: right  
TG: i'm all about that right now. feeling it. dirk what the fuck did i just do?  
TT: Something incredible. Something good, probably.  
TG: she's fucked up, man. she's really not here. she's never been less here.  
TT: Again, you need to get her out of that room.  
TG: why, what's wrong with the room? i like this room. this room is quickly becoming a place of scary-ambiguously-but-probably-good-memories. it's a nice shape, a nice size, the furniture is nice, the acoustics are even p good. i could jam here. the carpet is surprisingly comfortable for porking on. only thing i'd maybe change is the wallpaper. what's with your symbol all over the walls, egomaniac?  
TT: The wallpaper is designed to facilitate her dissociation.  
TG: fuck you. you're not even joking. that's really a thing you did. magic asshole wallpaper.  
TT: Yeah basically.  
TG: fuck you. ok, where do we go?  
TT: Heart-bed room down the hall, or downstairs to a generic model-home room of your choice.  
TG: they got any magic asshole hypno-curtains to worry about? carpets gonna make her bipolar? you got any floral arrangements gonna give her synthesia?  
TT: No, the facilitators are just in this room.  
TG: oh you fuck the carpet really is one too, isn't it? i can kind of see it, now.  
TT: There's also a rhythmic white noise generator, although it may have gotten busted when she came.  
TG: fuck you.  
TT: Dave just get her out of there.  
TG: right. fuck you. we're going downstairs.

"jade let's go downstairs."  
"nah. i'm tired. gonna go to sleep. we'll talk later." Staring high on the wall, eyes moving slowly downward.  
"i'll carry you."  
This inspires her to actually look away, to look at him. Jade fucking loves it when he carries her. Her regard for it is a universal constant. Her smile is dreamy.  
"ok."

He scoops her up while still seated, lifts them both up with a closed-mouth "hmmf". Jades head falls back, her hair falling free. She's luxuriating in it.  
"take me to bed, davey." (Oh shit. No, not possible. Literally not possible, everything Dirks read says it's strictly tied to certain developmental stages, the first formation of identity.)  
"dave, jade." (Dirk doesn't think Dave is having the same fear. He hopes not.)  
"oh, yeah. just sounded better. dave-eeeeeeeeeeeee" (Well, that's a relief?)  
Dave is looking at her with something like annoyance, tempered by concern. She's lulled back in his arms, her eyes closed.  
"jade what the fuck is this? what's happening?"  
"just tired. now mush."

The door is only a few steps away, but he can't open it himself.  
"jade, get the door?"  
"hmmmmm?"  
"jade?"  
She seems to have fallen asleep.

TG: i think she's done for the night. you'll just have to wait for your answer.  
TT: Dave we're on the edge of a worst-case scenario here. Forget about leaving.  
TG: stay in your jade-custom brain-rape-cage?  
TT: Yes.  
TG: explain yourself  
TT: She's not asleep. She's choosing this, now. You've taught her that she can choose, and she's choosing to go. Completely. The wallpaper isn't the fucking problem, here! Giving it that power now may actually be harmful, in the long run.  
TG: she's just tired. fuck. ok, what do i do?  
TT: You have to hurt her. Physically, something to force a reaction.

Dave drops her. She spins to face-down and would probably break her nose if she didn't wake and catch herself to floating a foot and a half off the ground.  
"WHAT"  
He flashes down to his knees, holding her head in his hands, forcing her to face him.  
"jade. look at ME, jade."  
"what happened? why did you drop me?"  
"jade look at ME."  
Her eyes are rushing over his face, settling nowhere. She can't bear to look - or she can't find him.  
TT: Dave take off your shades.  
He doesn't let go of her, just flicks his head backward and then forward-down, dropping them into his lap. Jade stares after them as though it's his nose that's fallen off, then giggles out  
"cooool trick"  
"jade, oh god. jade you have to say it right now. you have to face it right now."  
She's weeping again, but her smile is genuine as she looks up into his eyes. Genuine and pure pain.  
"ok. i'm here. i'm back."  
"really, jade?"  
She settles into a kneel, gently prying at his fingers.  
"congratulations, Mr. Strider, you've successfully broken the girls heart."  
He does surrender her head, but only to immediately claim her torso in a crippling-looking under-arm bearhug.  
"jade god don't go. not like that, never again."  
"no. no i won't. not like that."  
She 'fwap' smacks the back of his head.  
"i can't, if he's going to FUCKING DROP ME."  
Her eyes stare dead ahead, fixed on something Dirk could never tell. (No, that's not right, he could do the math, and a quick guess would say she's probably focusing on just one particular Heart. She's trying very hard.)  
"blame dirk."  
"yes that's fair. i'm blaming dirk for everything."  
"hah"  
"heh"

They can't bring themselves to another laughing-fit. Thank god. He's even more relieved to see her close her eyes, without also falling into a neutral expression. (She's still hurting, and it's a relief to him. Fuck this reality.)

"dave i don't know. dave am i here?"  
"that's a koan, jade."  
"what's a cone? is that a dog joke? fuck you if so."  
"yes. i mean, no, it's not a dog joke. yes, you're here."  
"ok."  
"jade?"  
"what?"  
He shifts his hold upward, taking her arms under his.  
"you're a bigtime badfeel painslut and it's getting out of hand."  
She tenses. Dirk can't tell if she's actually trying to attack or not. Dave probably can't either. She's not biting.  
"you're severely dissociative. you suffer attacks of intense general depersonalization, transient psychopathy. especially when faced with self-examination, but, "  
She's started shaking, definitely trying to push him away.  
"jade you use it. you ab-use it. i can't even honestly say you just suffer from it."  
She's fighting him, hard, but she might as well be trying to push herself out of a straight-jacket. She's not saying a word, hardly breathing.  
"you hate yourself more than anyone i've ever met, and for less real reason, "  
She gives up, goes slack in him. Her eyes stay closed and her face still shows the pain.  
"and jade, i dated karkat, for like, years."  
"ha." she croaks "what a faggot."  
He puts on his best gay-voice.  
"baby you know thath all in the past. you're the only man for me, now."  
"heh."

Assholes. He should send Sollux that little excerpt, see what Dave has to say with some DOOM-voodoo on him. Sollux would totally do it, too, just for the comedy, if nothing else. (Sollux is kind of a terrible person. In the best possible ways. Still terrible.)

"i'm sorry."  
"stop."  
He releases her, and she goes nowhere. She just raises her arms to loop them back over his shoulders.  
"we're just about to go back in a loop, anyway. i still don't know what to do, dave."  
"we're going to talk more. about your dissociation. all the time, jade."  
She does an ultra-slow-mo flinch, a general compression.  
"i can't."  
"you are right now. you have been all day. jade this is you, doing this."  
"not now. dave i'm, tired."  
He nods understanding.  
"ok. but, if you can, jade, please one more thing. about the sex-games, about jadiah and davey."  
He's using terms she can bear.  
"jade aren't they all part of this, too? or am i wrong? can you tell me that? because that's going to have to affect what happens."  
"there is no 'this', you're just being silly again. stop projecting your strilonde madness on me!" Calm and collected, tired smile, eyes like cut glass.  
"JADE, FUCK!"  
She flinches, then reaches out and lays a hand on his face. She's papping him.  
"davey don't be mad, i'm trying! i know i'm a sunk investment but please let me try to be a legacy project for you! i can make good for you i swear!"

Dirk is panicking. He's desperately recalling everything he knows about this. It's not real. In a very direct and straightforward way none of it's real, it's all pretend. Even if Jade doesn't know it. So it's not just panic telling him to deny this. This is her trying to meet the terms of the condition, she's trying to summon it. Possibly this is more 'dialogue'. The first time, the make-up, that was Jadiah, too? It won't really work regardless of what they do in response. It can't be real because, they would have known. Definitely. It's Jade pretending to pretend to be Jadiah. It's a double-negative, it's *really* just Jade. She just has to be reminded.

Dave is panicking. He recoils from her,  
"jade no jade no no"  
to his feet like he's falling upward, and he is, actually flying from her, going into stance like this is something he can strife away.  
"jade you have to stop right now."  
"what's wrong, davey? i'm sorry, i'm always making you mad and not even knowing why. i'm so stupid please don't be sad i'm sorry davey."  
His shades are chirping. They're right in front of her. He reaches down slowly to get them, jerking back and away hard as soon as they're in hand. She just keeps frowning, pouting up at him, yearning for, not his, but Daveys words.

TT:   
TT:   
TT:   
TT:   
TT:   
TT:   
TT:   
TG: go  
TT: Vriska. Better from you than me.

"vriska serket"  
There's no immediately visible change.

TT: No, as Davey. Like you did before with Terezi.  
TG: nope.   
TG: not playing that game, that is not a thing that's happening.  
TG: this is over now.

"jade, vriska ain't got shit on you for crazy. you make her look like the fucking mayor, by comparison. right now, i'd rather it be her here."

She displaces away. (bright translucent fabric over riveted steel walls, a floor covered in papers and broken eight balls, oh god no)

She's back almost instantly, with what must be Vriska. Holding her out, pinched like something unpleasant, which is exactly what she, it, is. It's a limbless, featureless stump, and it's not going to last long. It gurgles from what used to be a mouth, with an actual lower jaw. It sounds like nothing more than a wet towel when she drops it at his feet, splashing cerulean across the floor. She floats neutral, impassive.

Dirk knows then that everything is over, and his Heart breaks for them.

"well there she is, your requested queen bitch, you'd better finish her quick if you don't want it to stick."

He doesn't hesitate. He decaptchas the sword directly into her, and then away again. She's already sparkling in revival when he responds;

"#2 bitch preserved will be back again, but jade babygirl you gotta try and comprehend, meant every word that i said, you're really fucked in the head, and i love you forever but this half-troll glimmering back to life on the floor tells me you ain't been hearing what i been laying today or ever before, you're not always there and you wanna be a whore and not a jot of it matters next to this darkness you store, this is the real deal-breaker of our whole lives and more, the whole new world we all fought and all in fact died for, this puddle of blue shit we're standin in is what's keeping us from perfection by keeping you nailed in to death and devastation and if it were anyone but you we could manage it but the fact that it's, THIS, this is you, this is the real jade and if the strider can't it's no wonder the harley can't handle it."

He's hunched into a crouch, hands on the back of his head like he's trying to tear it apart (or hold it together). His gasp is ragged.

"i don't know what to do for you i don't know how to help, it may as well be me you're rippin up keepin in hell, hell is where i'm living watchin you tear yourself down, watchin you check yourself out, and then THIS, jade, seeing THIS and knowing it's all futile as well, i can't. i just can't. jade."

He falls as it leaves him, prostrate before her. He lifts himself up just enough to reach out to her, caked in the blue of her devil. He beseeches his broken goddess.

"jade if you're going to do this start with me."

She stares, and Dirk can't see anything in her face. But;

"you. you. you think i want to hurt you? that jade could harm the strider? cool kid messiah the only one whose got the time to find her alone in the cold lost forgotten and confused revealed for the rube given the impossible bargain with no clues just hanging on for her life with every, EVERY thing to lose and that -blue- whisper always there always to tell it's always an option to just snooze? whisper with you holding you up and back from as long as you knew, almost a friend in the years alone with only waiting to do, alone in your tower with your toys and your tools and the ghost of the one other soul you ever knew which your music only goes so far to confuse from the truth of what you've done and did when you couldn't let go and were expected even though he surely never knew it would be so soon but as a girlchild you don't know that don't know what to do when grandpa goes to sleep one afternoon."

She touches down slowly, not quite landing, feet rooted but still supporting herself with her flight rather than her legs.

"and, and, you can barely hold the knife it's literally too large and she's watching, silently demanding approving from where you couldn't bear to move her from her seat at the table where he'd been play-swooning her and, she's taught you how to sleep and that the dreams are true it's never been a question and it's easy to lose sight of what's in front of you of, what you, have, to do, when you remember you're a princess of a golden moon on mission and you're not, her. you're not red-finger giggle tasting salt-iron amazing you're not happy to see how his white comes free from the red beneath you're not cutting loose firm jello strips to feed to his beast which hasn't had this delicacy since he returned from his trip and you first learned the forms and tools and methods and rules for making the memorial, the first statue, that mysterious grown-up golden you which you can barely bear to look at because it tells you the truth, the truth he won't hide from you and now you run to too because you can't be her you're not red so you must be dead. you are the memorial, you are a golden princess of a golden moon, dream laughter, not giggles in the slick pour of your soul to the floor."

She's continued her descent, fallen to her knees, now, her back totally loose and leaving her to arch backwards, an almost-euphoric pose of surrender.

"or you are the blue. blue lady sitting silently smiling approvingly mistress of secrets the next thing to adult in your island of mystery. smiling reprovingly when you let the pain swallow you reminding you she's already given the tools to bear it and smile through. smiling small tired smiles of one overworked and overburdened but the weight she bears is invisible only one sign of her touch in the pistol she's not quite holding. in the sudden sleep it's not quite her controlling. in your whole new life of yourself and only yourself and too-large white comfort with all too quickly old home smell lost from his pelt new wildness without any masters hand and no fear of him but always a distance because he's always out. and you wait alone in your tower and you idolize her unknown, unknowable power and you master jade the gold lightness and add splashes of blue hardness finding out it transmutes to sharpness not the rending of red smooth slicing instead and it's just what you need sometimes to even get out of bed cut through your own weight of jade the golden memorial, jade the dead."

A mist settles over her as she jams, her hurt given mass. Then she snaps forward suddenly, with a snarl, to where the revived Vriska sits curled into herself against the wall. She is tiny in her already-ruined orange-(now)-blue robes, wide-eyed and silent. (Either a rare moment of wisdom, or more likely, simple shock.) Jade snarls at her, and the mist falls taught and black against her skin, turning her to slate.

"and then you meet her in life, real true flesh and there is no doubt vile villain with voice now cruel laughter behind that smile you knew and almost loved and all but taken for yourself. and she apologizes! apologizes without doubt in your foregone conclusion of forgiveness, apologizes for what you had forgotten and put aside as childhood confusion and, yes, your madness."

She's advanced as she spilled, and now has the nearly-catatonic Vriskas head in her hands (and her hands are the darker), for what must be the second time, manually manipulating her jaw to puppeteer her along with her own words, a child-cruel voice mockery;

"'gee, sorry jade, turns out i was your narcolepsy all along! now lets shake hands and move on! everything's fine because like vantas said 20 lives in all existence means not a single one can we afford to shed! and if it weren't just you, if i were literally all bad things in all of creation, blue lining in the devils green coat, well that's just more of the same, ain't it? so put her there and let's let bygones be bygones and oh, if you happen to carry me forever in the cracks where you take shelter wrought from the dreamstuff i amused myself by flinging you through, well that's just a shame but it's not like there's any thing i can do, sorry for being so cool to leave you so improved now ta-ta really must run so much more good works for me still to see through, a whole new universe to paint in my hue!'"

She leans in and speaks actually to Vriska now - and apparently, from the impossible-seeming deepening of her terror, Vriska knows what this means.  
"now, i must insist, bitch, you let me do that for you."

She rips the jaw off, again, it unexpectedly *cracks*, a fresh splash of cerulean running over her hand, around her forearms, staining the grey of her top.

"JADE!" Dave reacts but she ignores him, continues about her work of methodical deconstruction, her senses only for Vriska, now, eyes and ears and nose all transformed to mouths which exist only to drink pain. She's sliding her green-wrapped fingers effortless through the grey flesh of an elbow as she continues;

"and they all agree, all her friends think it's so cut and dried plain because the math don't lie and blames a losers game anyway, poor broken jade can't you see the only way to break this weight is twenty-for-twenty evenly, dirk and gamzee and equius and jane and even you, jade, where would we stop if we started thinking any other way? the only hate goes to The Game, right, Players don't fight, new rules for a new world, kumbayah and harmony and campfires and so much LOVE to be made under the starlight."

She punctuates "LOVE" with a vertical rip through a shoulder-stub and then the arms are gone, again, just meat on the ground. Vriska isn't even screaming, just gurgle-rasping in shock.

"but they're wrong and you're right they're wrong in their right, you know her nature you have worn it for decades a self-stranger knowing what she'll do left loose and Knowing when you Look that even God, Skaia, wouldn't deny you your dues."

She is much more efficient with the legs than the arms, just ripping right through the thighs and plucking them out by the hip-bone. Her flow continues uninterrupted, to match the thick flow of blue gore splattering her, the wall, a few errant flecks working their way to the ceiling.

"but you're held back by their words their glares their condemnation the fear you see in their eyes forever more after the first time there, after her" she spits in her face, an almost humorous insignificance "would-be reconciliation. you've been alone before and know you could again if needed but you're weighing the value of this..." she holds up her hands, glistening with the slick grit of shredded muscles, inhales deeply "...and even this is found needing next to him his touch and care the one, the single one whose leaving... but no, really all of them although you'd like to be romantic, miracle strider boy is only half of the half of the heart that isn't reserved for all of them together, that one real magic. they hold you hostage from your resolution with the one thing you can't bear and meanwhile that blue whisper echos still 'you don't need to be here'..."

She's done. Her hands fall slack from the gasping, gurgling lump before her, her eyes finally take their fill of its suffering and permit themselves to close. But then Vriska does scream, chokes and rattles out her last, desperate plea, some part of her still clinging to the facts and knowing there's moments left for Dave to snatch her from the jaws of Justice. Jade doesn't like the noise,  
"OH JUST SHUT THE FUCK UP!"  
hands clenching down around her neck to cleave her head from her body, a killing blow.

But then Vriska is gone, and all the giblets, too. The pool of cerulean remains, but is reduced to something as inoffensive as paint without the dismembered troll to contextualize it. He must have done a Time thing, and the now nearly uniform blackness of his pajamas shows he's been away long enough for her to fully dry in, but not enough for them to clean themselves of her. Maybe a couple hours, at most.

Jades hands complete their clench down on air, as she simply stares into the now-empty space. She turns and rises, slowly, to give Dave a sneer of surprisingly mild annoyance. She is entirely saturated in blue blood, Anubis in lapis.

"she made it?"  
He doesn't say anything. He probably can't speak, right then, looking at her, like that. She takes the lack of denial as an affirmative.  
"thanks, i guess."  
He gestures at the miniature ocean around them, arms out low.  
She shrugs, "dave, meet jade."  
He shakes his head, "no."  
"oh, yes, yes dave. yes it is!" She beams, returning his arms-out gesture to the room, but hers high, exultant. "THIS! IS! JADE!"

He decaptchalogs Vriskas head onto the floor between them, splashing into the blue.

"no, she didn't make it."

She tenses, caught in the gap between fight and flight.

"nineteen, jade. nineteen and you know what that means, what has to come next."

Then she relaxes, nods.

"eighteen. ok. do it. and, i'm sorry, dave. i hope i'll see you there."  
"you won't. you won't see anything."  
"ok. goodbye, then."  
"JADE NO! jade you won't see. you won't feel or smell or taste or hear. jade, please, don't let me..."  
"it's ok, dave. i'm good at that, remember?"  
He shakes his head, fists clenched, hunching, like he's holding something back. Like there's anything left to withhold.  
"i'm glad it's you, and not aradia. it being you makes it easy. to not fight. i don't want to fight. i don't want to hurt anyone. i'm tired. you can take me and i can go, dave. it's easy."  
Dave can't. He spews meaningless speech against the inevitable;  
"she's up with dirk. fail-safe. she'd take the whole block."  
(Dirk starts out of the pose he's held so long, looking around for her. But he is alone.)  
"stop talking and do it. let me go."  
"jade, was it worth it?"  
She smiles, sadly.  
"dave. that's a really stupid question."  
Dave raises his hands, and Jade stops.

Now Aradia will appear, momentarily, from wherever she actually is, to help him move her to The End - the great nothing that will be left when this universe finally completes its slow-motion dissolution. It is the only punishment possible, for her. The only neutralization. It has been discussed, made clear to everyone, after the first time. Jade was present, bodily, just smiling serenely, laughing it all off like a joke. She actually made a few useful suggestions about the technicalities, used her Game knowledge to help find ways around what both Dave and Aradia had believed to be limits on their forward travel. (The End is different, somehow, was the gist Dirk got. They don't like to talk about it.) Dirk is dimly aware he's having his own depersonalization moment, his own sheltering shock. He's just watched Vriska die, which is honestly nothing to him but some small relief, and now Jade is going as well. Which is, honestly, a significant relief - but, unlike Vriska, also an incomprehensible tragedy. They're just facts, for the moment - he's not feeling any of it... yet.

Dave just stands there, catching his breath. Dirk hopes, not thinking. Then he steps to her, kicking the head aside, and takes her into a hug. He gets her tight in his arms, and then he unfreezes her. She jumps - from her perspective he's just flash-stepped on her, gotten her in a hold. She might even think this is part of it, part of the method for ending her.

Then she realizes what's actually happening, and she laughs.  
"seriously? Knight of Hugs."  
The laughter quickly becomes sobbing.  
"why are you doing this? this isn't fair, if you're going to do it, do it. let me go. just let me go!"  
"never, jade."  
"YOU HAVE TO, NOW! IT'S OVER NOW, I'M OVER!" There's an unmissable element of giddiness weaving through her panic. A genuine readiness, eager anticipation. He ignores it.  
"jade, shush. i want, i need you to listen very carefully, and accept what i say. please don't speak, until you've done so. vriska's fine. you're not 'over'. nothing is over."  
"no." For a long moment she just stops, like she just can't comprehend it. (Or like she's stepping out.) Dirk realizes she must be Looking, confirming. "nooooooooooo, why?"  
"to let you choose, after, to go or not. to know what you'd do."  
"dave i could've killed everyone. worse. dave i can't..."  
"but you didn't. jade, " he withdraws from her just far enough to reach up and in to cover her mouth with his hand "i need you to listen very carefully now. you're not over. vriska isn't over. nothing has ended. what's over, right now, is every bit of role-play. including yours, jade, especially yours. all of it. please hear this, please understand this. please take it off. do you understand, jade? just nod or shake."  
She is still for several seconds, before closing her eyes and nodding.  
"good. do you think you can? do you think you can stay here, stop it? i understand and accept if you can't, jade. i do understand, and that's fine. i just need to know where we stand, right now. do you think you can?"  
She keeps her eyes closed, and doesn't need to wait several seconds this time - she is almost immediately shaking, just short of thrashing, and Dirk is surprised by her silence through it, not even moaning.  
"ok. jade thank you for being honest. we're going to keep going, as long as it's valuable. i'll decide. ok? and then we can both go to sleep, and when we wake up nothing will have changed except that," he hesitates, unsure how direct he can be without sending her off, "we'll have talked about these things we hadn't, before. and you're not going to pretend otherwise, right? this is happening, this has happened."  
She nods. Dirk wonders who's fed Dave these lines, Terezi or an hours-older future version of Dirk himself? Or did Dave just spend several decades mastering talk therapy before faking an hours-long absence?  
"jade, i did it because i needed to know, and i needed to be able to show the others -" her eyes open in panic, and he sees "no, jade, it's fine. only vriska, dirk, and terezi, right now. but now i can say, when the challenge comes, which it may or may not, i know she's safe. ok? just, to know, to be able to say truly i know what i never really doubted, the only one really and now it's settled... sorry, rambling."  
He takes a deep breath to center himself.  
"i also needed to let you have it in the first place. jade, tell me now; do you still want it? think about it, first."  
He keeps his hand over her mouth for several more seconds, and she stays quiet a few more after it's removed.

"i want it forever, dave. i want to rip her apart forever. i wish i had your powers, so i could. i actually wish it wouldn't be Just, so i could. i want her to hurt, and never stop hurting. death would be too good for her."  
She smiles at him, dreamily.  
"thank you so much for giving her back to me. my blue lady doll."

"jade, i want you to take a moment to think about what you just said."  
"i know it's fucked, wrong, dark and evil and, red." she stops to sniff and then lick her fingers, at which she does not grimace in disgust, but does frown in distaste "oh, if only she bled real red! she's too thin, insubstantial, not slippery enough..." she sees how he's responding to this, the subtle tells that he's slipping into tactical consideration, remembers herself somewhat "i know, dave! i know, and that's why i can't be, dave, don't you see?" she pauses briefly, deciding how bold to be, "dave, you should do it anyway. you should send me away, right now, before i do it. because you're right, i will, inevitably. you've always been right, about that."  
His slowly deepening scowl breaks suddenly into an open grimace of unconcealed disgust, for her.  
"jade, shut the fuck up with that noise. you're so fucking transparent, and also really fucking stupid when it comes to this shit. sometimes i wonder how anyone is ever scared of you, you're so, so fucking DUMB, harley. fuck. sending you to The End is not a masochism game. it is The End."  
His anger shames her silent and still (gone, again?) and Daves seeing that just makes him angrier, now at himself as well.  
"FUCK! jade, listen. are you here, are you listening?"  
"yes, dave-, yes." He ignores the almost-slip. Dirk gets the feeling that there's going to be a lot of that in the future.  
"what i was getting at, was that you're sounding pretty not-'red'."  
"wha- WE ARE NOT KISMESIS!"  
She shoves him away, and he nearly slips in the slick, but catches himself back up with a bounce, momentarily falling into a defensive posture before forcing himself back down, putting his hands low and flat in concession.  
"no, not really, but jade, i kn-"  
She stands with her arms up almost in a boxing guard, leaned forward to holler  
"THERE IS NOTHING SEXUAL ABOUT THIS! GOD THE THOUGHT OF IT, I AM GOING TO BE SICK AGAIN. THE THOUGHT OF YOU THINKING THAT, OF IMAGINING ANYTHING LIKE THAT, THE TWO OF US, TOGETHER! DON'T YOU DARE!"  
"well i wasn't imagining it before..."  
"NO JOKES ABOUT THIS! THIS IS NOTHING SEXUAL! I AM *NOT* BLACK FOR HER!"  
"jade you literally just turned black, for her."  
"IT'S NOTHING SEXUAL!"  
"JADE, PRACTICALLY NOTHING YOU FIND SEXY IS ANYTHING SEXUAL!"  
"FUCK YOU!"  
"WELL, YEAH, except that obvious exception. guess not even your fucked-up kinks can press out the innate strider hotness."  
"oh, just, fuck you. idiot."  
"like i was saying - i know you're not, really. i have plenty of first-hand experience at being not-really-black for someone. but, jade, you have to know she thinks you are."  
"she is completely insane."  
"listen, pot, you'll get no argument from me about kettle being totally fucking nutso. but in this particular case... jade i know. i've spent the past few hours, dave-time, talking with the two of them. i know all about it, jade."  
She's gone very still.  
"jade? are you here? is this too far?"  
She answers calmly;  
"what is it you think you know?"  
"no, jade. no more of this. take it off. i know you know what i know, and you know i know you know."  
"...no?"  
"ha! gotcha!"

She doesn't smile or laugh, but it's there in her eyes. It's the first time Dirk realizes, Dave's really done it. They've(?) really done it, Dave and him and maybe Terezi had something to do with it? They've already won. Just like that, one intense conversation and suddenly everything's changed. (Ok, any 'conversation' featuring a twice-torso'd psychotroll, the threat of a hellish undeath, and a feelings-jam of that intensity probably needs some other name...) She'll surely always have it, but it no longer has her. There is no doubt in Dirks mind, now, that she is, eventually, going to make it.

"dave whatever you think you know is wrong. that's all. you're simply mistaken." Cool and soft like autumn. Not Jade, not jade - cerulean. (It's interesting to put a name to it, like that... and definitely a bad idea, actually. It IS Jade. They can't forget that, they have to remember it for her.) Eventually, she will make it.  
"you've done this before tonight. not just the first time, back just after, when she tried to use you to absolve herself. since then, you've never stopped doing it. sometimes you make memorials of her, sometimes you just destroy her, like tonight. and terezi is always there to give the killing blow which saves her. you make sure of it. and vriska stays quiet about it because she's completely fucked and thinks that it's, this," he looks around "is kismesisitude. and terezi goes along for vriskas sake. same old scourges, right?" He tries out a small smile, but she gives no response.  
"jade you have to stop. i mean, take it off. but, also stop doing it. to her. fuck these word games make things confusing. jade?"  
"she's insane, dave. she's all alone now that everyone's learned the truth about her and she's looking at a future eternity of being alone, because she's truly irredeemable, and she was an insane person to start with and now she's an insanely lonely insane person and so she's making things up, making up stories in her head to ease her pain. and just making it worse, and just making herself crazier." she smiles, a sudden ray of brightness through her overcast face "oh, that's so good. that's just perfect, for her."  
"who are we talking about, again? vriska, or -"  
She snaps to attention, from where she had been staring at their faint reflections in the blood around their feet.  
"DON'T. never."  
"... jade." Not a question. Not a comparison. He's just saying her name.  
Jade just stares, falling through increments to pity. Her boy's been tricked, by the devil herself, of course he would be. She's not mad at him for it, just sad about it.

Dave sees it, and knows it's time to call it quits. They've come more than far enough for one day.  
"okay, jade. ok."  
He sighs out all his stress, accepting the armistice.  
"jade. jade. jade. are you there, at all?"  
"of course, where else would i be?" Small pained smile, bright eyes.  
"right. i guess that'll have to do. retain this. i want to leave you with a mental image."  
He raises his arm in a contortion, conjuring a glass vial full of golden liquid, and a knife.  
"this is terezis idea, i think you'd have guessed anyway..."  
He pours it out on the floor, into the blue, the green spreading between them.  
"you don't get to choose, jade."  
He snatches her hand, suddenly, and she jumps instinctively. Then again, as he draws the knife across her palm, issuing scarlet. She jumps, and jerks her hand back, but she doesn't actually pull out or fight.  
"look, jade."  
She looks. Her bruised and puffy pink-and-purple mess of a face lowers its half-lidded eyes from his, where they sit armored in his face burnt bright with the remains of her love. She looks at the floor.  
"you don't have to."

A jade flower, blooming, but it's only as he squeezes her hand and the drops of her red fall into it that it is completed, sprouting it's stamen. Stark black blotches in the center of its beauty - but they are not marring wounds - they are just another part of the whole. Arguably the most important part.

It's sweet, but Dirk really doubts she gets it. Dave probably should have used his own hand, that physical assault on top of everything else seems to have pushed her all the way out. If she does keep anything from this, from the time she first snatched in Vriska, this probably won't be part of it.

But then, there are suddenly spots of lightness spreading in the petals, like the first signs of wilting. And then it's smashed to nothing, a green-brown mess, as Dave closes the distance it had lived in and takes his crying lover in his arms, again. Dirk expects he'll keep here there right up and into and through the shower, to bed. He hopes so.

Dirk takes his shades off and rubs his tired eyes. He leaves them recording as he gets up and leaves the room. Dave Management starts in less than an hour, and he needs something hot. It is, apparently, going to be a very long day, yet.


End file.
